


How Q Hacked Online Dating

by JayEz



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: (srly how did I end up writing a rom-com), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Awesome Eve Moneypenny, Bill Tanner is a sneaky bastard, Explicit Sexual Content, First Dates, Humor, M/M, Not SPECTRE Compliant, Online Dating, Romantic Comedy, a wee bit of angst, inspired by a TED Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:55:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6098101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayEz/pseuds/JayEz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How does that lead to…?” Eve waves her hand at the mess behind Q’s back.<br/>Q feels his expression morph into a sly grin. “I have a new plan. I’m going to stay on these dating platforms, but I’m going to treat them as databases. Rather than waiting for an algorithm to set me up, I'm going to try reverse-engineering this entire system.”</p><p>In which Q works in the private sector, still winds up friends with Eve, and applies science to his love life. Obviously, Eve gets involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw [this TED Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U) and then the fic basically wrote itself. Thanks to [merlenhiver](http://archiveofourown.org/users/merlenhiver) for giving this a quick once-over. 
> 
> I hope at least a few of you find this as entertaining as I do ;)

When Q arrives – _almost_ punctual – at the small bistro on the ground floor of The Riverside, Eve is at their usual table. 

“I already ordered for you,” she says without looking up from her phone where she is probably composing an email that will stop an international incident or something equally heroic. 

She might say she’s just a simple Personal Assistant but Q has his suspicions. She’s too scarily efficient. Besides, he’s seen her handle a steak knife and take out a mugger with three well-aimed hits – his leading theory at the moment is superspy posing as a PA on an undercover mission. Q did a background check during a lull at his high-paid, gradually growing less-than-challenging corporate job, and found nothing out of the ordinary, however. 

“You’re a goddess,” Q breathes reverently, and he must have sounded as exasperated as he feels since his best friend raises her eyes. 

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Monday.”

“Which doesn’t usually make you look like someone drowned your cats.” Eve pauses. “Your cats are fine, aren’t they?”

“Turing and Linux are perfectly all right in their feline glory…” Q props himself up on his elbows, resting his head on his hands as he huffs. 

Eve merely quirks an eyebrow at his dramatics, so Q cuts to the chase. 

“That bloke I was telling you about? Mr Second Date This Weekend?”

A smirk spreads across Eve’s features and she prompts, putting her phone away, “The one who bored you to tears but looked like an underwear model?”

Q returns her smile – more like a grimace, he’s sure – before pointedly slumping his shoulders. “Cut our date short because we both knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. I invited him to my place so we could end on a positive note, and we were snogging on the sofa when he started sneezing uncontrollably.”

Eve winces in sympathy. “Allergies?”

Q nods. 

“At least Linux didn’t try to bite his penis off,” Eve remarks – which is obviously the moment their waiter appears to take Q’s order for drinks. 

Once his face feels less like he could boil an omelette on his cheeks, Q aims a miserable glance at Eve. 

“Why does this keep happening to me?”

Eve rolls her eyes at him. “Shush you. Just because you had one bad date doesn’t mean –”

“ _One bad date?_ ” Q scoffs. “May I remind you of, I don’t know, any of the men I’ve gone out with in the past year?”

“If you’re so bad at it, why not stop dating for a bit? Enjoy being single. Like me.” Eve aims a cheeky grin at him and Q throws his napkin at her. 

“Unlike you, I’m turning 30 in five months. Do you know what that means?”

“Finally attending 30 plus parties and not feeling out of place?”

“Ha-bloody-ha.” Q straightens for the minute it takes their waiter to place his water bottle on the table and pour some in his glass before reiterating what he told Eve approximately four-point-five times (the point-five being interrupted by Eve’s boss calling her at 11PM on a Friday – _‘just a regular PA’, my arse,_ Q reckons). “I might as well turn invisible. If I want an actual life partner, I have to find him soon.”

“You can’t force love.”

“I can bloody well try.” Q doesn’t pout, but it’s close. 

“You just have to keep looking, then,” Eve teases, eliciting a drawn-out groan. 

“It’d take too long! I need something more efficient.”

He watches Eve’s brows furrow. “What’s wrong with going out and talking to people?”

There goes his promise of not admitting to the calculations he did that weekend after his date ended so terribly. Q takes a deep breath and meets Eve’s questioning stare head-on. 

“There are 8.6 million people in Greater London. If we assume an equal distribution of sex, then that’s 4.3 million men. I’m looking for someone between 25 and 40, which is only twenty percent, bringing us to 860,000 eligible individuals in the Greater London area.”

By now, Eve is blinking at him with her lips agape. Q figures he’s lost any and all coolness points he ever scored with the woman at a point long, long ago during their two-year friendship, and barges on. 

“Depending on which statistic one believes, between two and seven percent of people aren’t straight; let’s play it safe and assume the number is 4.5 percent, which leaves me with 36,980. Minus ten percent for cat allergies, then roughly another ten percent of people who, for reasons that shall baffle me until I’m in my grave, hate cats, and we’re down to 29,584 men. I’ll spare you the algorithms I’ve used, but suffice it to say I’m not taking the tube for two sodding hours just to meet up with some bloke in Twickenham, and while I’m not shallow I also have a type –”

Eve snorts, but Q ignores her. 

“So all things considered that leaves me with 469 possible candidates that I could possibly date in all of London.”

When he considers his friend, she’s unsuccessfully suppressing a laughing fit, but their food arrives before his glares can do any lasting damage. 

“You’re saying, in your own, nerdy way,” Eve prompts, “that you’re going to spend the next five months dating 469 people?”

Now it’s Q’s turn to laugh. “Don’t be absurd. Even one date per day would only suffice to cover 150 before I turn 30, and I can’t possibly incorporate two dates into my daily schedule.”

Admittedly, even one date a day would be a challenge, seeing as Q is the first to arrive at the Applied Science division of Keating Consolidated and the last to leave. 

“What’s your genius plan, then?” The twinkle in Eve’s eyes is definitely teasing. 

“Well, obviously I have two choices – take the risk and hope that I’ll maybe bump into that one out of 469 blokes who’s right for me… or I could try online dating.”

At first, Eve seems doubtful, though then she tilts her head and grins. “Twenty-something genius, closeted nerd who loves his cats more than his sister, looking for suave hunk with more brains than brawn to enjoy nights spent programming instead of going out, because a brilliant idea hit that might revolutionise the world?”

Q opens his mouth to argue but, sadly, that is a rather apt description of him. 

_Expect maybe the cats vs. sister part. It’s more of a tie, really…_

Eve’s words still echo in his head eight hours later when he runs a quick search for dating site options. Some specs for the new prototype are rendering in the background, a stack of documents he needs to read before the meeting on Wednesday is hidden by the locked screen of his tablet but still niggling at the back of his mind, and both Linux and Turing seem to have decided they need to redecorate by pushing at various items about his flat. 

In other words – he’s busy. He’s too busy to come up with witty descriptions for the blank boxes that stare at him from his laptop screen, identical ones waiting one tab over. 

“It’s like applying for a job, isn’t it?” he asks the room at large. 

Neither of his cats replies. He takes this as silent endorsement and copy-pastes parts of his CV into the appropriate boxes. 

“You did _what_?!” Eve practically screeches when he tells her the next time their lunch breaks overlap and the hour they get finds them at their favourite restaurant. 

“Well, in the descriptive part up top I said I’m the youngest graduate that Cambridge’s computer science department has ever seen, that I dabble in structural and mechanical engineering as well and for the hobbies I talked a lot about Linux and Turing and coding…”

He fears Eve might crack a rib from attempting to hold in her laughter. 

“What did you put as ideal date?” she chokes out after gulping down half of her tab water.

Q shrugs. “Drinks after work and him not minding if I jot down notes on my tablet from time to time.”

“You’re going to die alone, Q.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he argues. “There are plenty of men who’d like to date me.”

The fact that the websites’ algorithms apparently found a sea full of likely matches doesn’t keep Eve from interrupting the rest of their lunch with fits of laughter, yet Q just sneers since he is going on date number one later tonight. 

Date number one is dreary, to say the least. 

The man is Steve, an I.T. guy at a local university, and the algorithm matched them given their love for computers, math, data, and science fiction series. He’s handsome enough, Q finds as they meet for drinks at a pub. The only problem is that there’s a game on and Steve is an enormous rugby fan, so his attention is mostly on the flat screen nearest to their place at the bar. After ten minutes proved enough to gauge that anything Q says that exceeds basic networking principles would go straight over Steve’s pretty head, Q produces his tablet with a sigh. 

Steve gets to enjoy the game; Q gets some more work done. 

At the end of the night, the tosser has the gall to ask, “Wanna come back to my place, babe?” 

Q up and leaves, saddling him with the bill he intended to split originally. 

_Serves him right._

Only Steve doesn’t remain an isolated mishap. 

CutieFrank82 takes him to a Mongolian barbecue even though Q told him – once, in his profile – that he’s a _vegetarian_ , and refuses to see a problem since, you know, there’s salad. 

QueerCrusader, despite his nickname, doesn’t speak up immediately when a group of tearaway teens at the Costa table next to theirs start taunting and trolling them, and looks at Q like he’s barmy when he pulls out his phone and hacks their neighbours’ devices, causing a mass panic. 

JustARegularHunk, while utterly charming and modest via email, turns out to be the most conceited pillock Q has ever met. They meet up for brunch – _points for creative first date idea, I admit_ – but Q insists on choosing the restaurant in the wake of the BBQ disaster. 

It’s his sister’s shift, so Q signals Jessica and then proceeds to act rather rude to her. 

JustARegularHunk fails to defend the waitress. The prick even joins into Q’s criticisms, which have been anything but warranted since Jess is actually a brilliant waitress, and Q eventually asks her to change the arsehole’s order to takeaway. 

“Already done, brother dear,” she says with a wink for him and a stink-eye for the other man. 

“She’s your _sister_?”

His date goes spare, and leaves in a strop. Q sniffles into his dish and bemoans the declining standard of British men. 

“You’re just being too picky,” Jessica volunteers without prompting. “Sure, that bloke was a right wanker, but just cause someone made you eat salad doesn’t mean he’s categorically bad.”

At least Eve is slightly more sympathetic to his pain – after hiding her grin behind her hands, that is. 

His colleagues, on the other end… not so much. 

“Fine, you know what?” Q announces to the sniggering herd of co-workers who are usually such smart, considerate people until you introduce gossip to the mix. Even Sam, Eve’s ex and the reason she and Q met, is sneering. 

“From now on I’m going to have a template with me on every date and I’m going to collect information on all these data points during the dates, and once I can _empirically prove_ to you all that these dates are horrible, you’ll see reason.”

*

Q continues to go on dates, only now he is tracking daft, awkward, racist or sexist remarks, bad vocabulary, or the number of times a man stumbles over the simplest technological concepts. 

After four weeks, Q ends up with a lot of numbers. He extrapolates a few correlations, like for example that men who drink Heineken are into kinky sex. 

(Not that he tests the truth content of their claims with every single bloke… just a few. He hasn’t had such a fulfilled sex life since university.)

The date that causes yet another re-evaluation of his approach to life starts out rather promising. Jason is Idris Elba levels of attractive and down-to-earth despite his obvious successful career.

 _First minus point: paint ball as a first date._

“Aw, don’t pout like that,” Jason tells him, gripping his shoulder. “Although, it does make you look pretty _cute_ ,” he adds with a wink. 

_Second minus point: bad puns._

That’s what he gets for telling someone to call him by his one-letter nickname ten minutes into the conversation instead of the awful name his parents saddled him with. He will never understand what moved them to put _Quincey_ on his birth certificate. 

At the end of the day Q is too exhausted to put much effort into pulling, yet the frustration does spark sudden inspiration. Thankfully, it’s Friday so he has all weekend to pursue it. 

Thirty-six hours later, Eve finds him buried within stacks of notes in his living room, his two whiteboards put up and covered in equations, and in pyjamas he might have been wearing since yesterday morning. 

“Q… Is this the psychotic break I’ve been placing bets on?”

“What? No! This is _science_!” 

_Maybe that sounded a tad manic._

His eyes fall on the paper bag and cups Eve brought with her that emanate a very distinctive smell. “Wait, what happened? You only bring muffins when the world almost ended. If ‘the world’ means the microcosm of your office, that is.”

Eve flops down on the sofa and screams into a cushion. 

“That bad?” Q asks. 

Eve’s reply is muffled by the fabric, but it sounds very much like “Worse.”

“Here, drink your caramel latte and tell Dr Q what’s wrong.”

“I’d mock you if I didn’t know the lie in that sentence is that you really have two doctorates.”

He aims a smug grin at her and cuddles up to Linux and Turing, who adjust their positions on the sofa in obvious annoyance. _The joys of feline love._

“It’s nothing major; my boss’s favourite employee just bollocksed up big time. He’ll make it right, like every single time. Just until he does, I get to deal with the fallout at the office.”

Q hums in sympathy. Every office seems to have that one person who keeps screwing up – at Keating Consolidated it’s Alana in Administration. 

“Now,” Eve says once their muffins have been consumed, “tell me why you’ve gone all Beautiful Mind on me here.”

“I resent that reference,” Q grumbles, but explains. “I determined what the problem is. I mean, the men those sites suggested aren’t bad guys per se – they’re just bad for me. The algorithms behind those matches aren’t necessarily bad either. Simplistic, and lacking any real levels of sophistication, granted, but not bad.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“As loath as I am to say this,” Q sighs, “but the problem is that we’re dealing with people. When confronted with blank windows, we aren’t always completely honest and quite frankly, I don’t care if my potential life partner likes horror films or 80s music, which is what so many of these sites rely on. It’s all just too superficial for my purposes.”

“How does that lead to…?” Eve waves her hand at the mess behind Q’s back. 

Q feels his expression morph into a sly grin. “I have a new plan. I’m going to stay on these dating platforms, but I’m going to treat them as databases. Rather than waiting for an algorithm to set me up, I'm going to try reverse-engineering this entire system.”

He waits for the impressed gasp his idea warrants. 

Eve merely cocks an eyebrow. 

Q’s theory of superspy-hood intensifies. 

“Anyway,” he barges on, “knowing that there’s superficial data that’s being used to match me up with other people, I’ve decided to ask my own questions instead, about every single possible thing that I can think of that I’m looking for in a mate.”

“Mate?”

“Life partner, whatever,” Q shakes his head. “Do you want details or not?”

“Oh, please, carry on,” she allows with over-the-top magnanimousness. 

“I’ve amassed seventy-two different data points. I’m looking for someone who’s atheist, but tolerant – I mean, he’s going to be confronted with my mother one day, so he better be fine with other people’s beliefs – and someone who’s working hard, who’ll understand that my hobbies are mostly just additional projects for work with the occasional binge of a series or a few films thrown into the mix –”

“Hang on,” Eve interrupts. “Seventy-two criteria like that?”

“I know, it’s a lot,” Q concedes. “Which is why I prioritised the list. I broke it into a top tier and a second tier of points, and I’m raking everything starting at 100 going all the way down to 91, so I’m balancing the most important aspects with others that are important but not necessarily deal-breakers if someone doesn’t meet them.”

Eve seems torn between awe and shock. As it happens, that is a common reaction to Q’s ideas. 

“I’ve also built a scoring system, though the programme I wrote to help evaluate profiles is still rendering… I reckon a possible candidate needs a minimum of 700 points before I agree to message or email someone. And 900 is the date threshold; relationship-wise I’m thinking 1,500.”

Eve blinks, then shakes herself. “You’re mental, Q. Anyone ever tell you that?” 

“My sister. Repeatedly,” is his dry reply, and they share a laugh as they finish their beverages. 

*

“Miss Moneypenny, would you set up a meeting with Human Resources as soon as they’re available?”

Eve’s hand is already on the telephone before her boss finishes his request, yet she pauses when she sees the man. Mallory, usually the paragon of composure, looks decidedly ruffled.

“May I enquire as to why, sir?”

He stops on his way into his office and turns until his body is angled towards her again. 

“Major Boothroyd wants to retire, says it’s a younger men’s game now. Meaning we’ll have to look for a replacement.” 

“Do you already have anyone in mind, sir?” slips from her lips before Eve can stop herself. After all, she’s been counting the days until the grandpa throws in the towel, or whatever metaphor works for engineers who have surpassed their prime. 

“Our agency’s not exactly swimming in technological prodigies at the moment,” Mallory drawls, raising that judgmental eyebrow of his that never fails to make Eve cringe. 

“Apologies, sir.” 

She makes a show of picking up the phone and Mallory disappears into his office. His exasperation is understandable – given the imminent upheaval, MI6 has lost some of its appeal to new employees. Why the Committee thinks pooling both MI5 and MI6 into one big agency is beyond Eve. 

She arranges the meeting for an hour later, courtesy of some creative reshuffling, and keeps the intercom on. 

Mallory is perfectly aware she is listening in to certain conversations; it’s not like the blue light on his own telephone set is hard to miss, really. So if he had a problem with it, he’d have said or done something long ago. 

As things are, Eve gathers enough intel to conclude that Q would be perfect for the job. 

She’s still snickering to herself about how ironic it would be if Q actually started working as head of Q-Branch when James Bond materialises in front of her desk.

“No,” she says without missing a beat. 

“Eve.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Damn that man’s bloody voice and daft blue eyes. Eve can feel her resolve crumbling the longer she considers him. 

“What do you want this time?”

James’s smile widens, increasing his charm tenfold. “Heard a rumour about a new mission in the Caribbean. Thought you might nudge Tanner in my direction.”

Eve smirks. “What gave you the impression that’s in my power? I’m just a PA.”

The agent doesn’t respond right away, holding her gaze with an amount of smugness that would look standoffish on anyone except for him. 

“Everyone clever enough to see knows you run half the agency, Miss Moneypenny.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“How about a bribe?”

Eve squints at MI6’s most notorious agent. “What kind of bribe?”

“I leave it to you to decide.”

“You’d give me carte blanche, Mr Bond?”

007 raises a hand. “Within reason. But yes.”

Eve’s lips are curling even before she has consciously made her choice, and judging by the glint in Bond’s eyes, he noticed. 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’re a goddess.”

“That seems to be the prevailing opinion.”

Chuckling, James Bond sweeps out of her office with a spring in his step. 

His comment would have made her think of Q if her thoughts weren’t already on the boffin, and how she has barely seen him in three weeks due to some conference he needs to prepare for. If she recalls correctly, the event concluded today, so hopefully she’ll find him at his flat. 

He had a key made for her soon after they officially reached best friends status, and Eve isn’t hesitant about using it. The sight that greets her that evening is only a step up from the slightly mental impression Q gave off when he explained his two-tier system. There are fewer papers scattered across the flat, yet Q’s tunnel vision as he types away on his laptop on the sofa is eerily similar. 

“Do I want to know?”

He startles viscerally, sending Turing off the cat’s spot next to his owner with an angry meow. 

“Competition, Eve!” Q gripes, apropos nothing. “How could I forget the bloody competition!”

She walks into the kitchen, only a few steps away due to the open floor plan of the flat, and flicks the kettle on. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And since Q secretly lives off air, tea, and showing off, he dives headfirst into an elaborate explanation. 

“I found the perfect man, only to be outwitted by SmileyBoy1988! I never even calculated for the possibility that the perfect man might not like me back, which in retrospect is a grave oversight on my part. Daft, really. So I’ve set up an experiment during the conference – went splendidly, by the way – and created ten fake male profiles matching exactly what I’m looking for.”

Eve feels her brow furrow. Q must have seen her scepticism, for he immediately qualifies his statement. 

“Not to catfish or whatever it’s called, no – I just need to do some market research. See what kind of competition my ideal candidates lure in, collect data on the type of men interested in the type of man I’m going to end up with. I didn’t reach out to anyone, Eve, stop looking at me like that and pour me a mug as well, will you?”

Eve indulges him, if only because she fears he hasn’t been hydrating well enough. He can become a tad obsessive when he’s ‘in the zone’. 

“I’ve been analysing the profiles of lads who messaged those fake accounts,” Q continues, flapping his hand at a few of the papers strewn across the coffee table, “And I’ve gathered two different data sets. I have qualitative data, like what’s the humour, the tone, the voice, the communication style that my competition has in common, and quantitative data, like how long do they wait between messages, average profile length, and so on.”

Now Eve begins to understand. “You want to improve your own profile according to your results.”

“Exactly!” Q adjusts his glasses, eyes returning to the screen of his laptop. “As it turns out, there might be some room for improvement.”

He says it like he didn’t treat it like a job application. 

“I could’ve told you that,” Eve teases, taking her usual seat and starting to caress Linux with one hand while holding her mug in the other. Q’s mug remains ignored. 

Her friend scowls at her. “Well, smart people generally write a lot, so I believe that was an honest mistake.”

“And what about the popular ones?”

“97.”

“Pardon?” Eve quips. She spies a blush rising in Q’s cheeks. Making him flustered is such a fun pastime. 

“97 words,” Q repeats through gritted teeth. “They’re very concise and rather vague in terms of language, and full of optimistic vocabulary. I’m afraid I haven’t seemed the most approachable in my presentation online.”

“You don’t say.”

“Someone who’s stealing my tea shouldn’t make snide remarks, Miss Moneypenny.”

“I bought you this tea because you’re always out and then you’re miserable,” Eve points out. 

Q acquiesces. 

“What else?” Eve probes. “I’m sure that can’t have been all you’ve done wrong.”

The question earns her a glare but also a grumbled admission that the photos Q used were no match, none at all for the fellow predators prowling the depths of online dating websites. 

“You used the photo from Halloween, oh my gosh!” 

“Stop laughing; I owned that costume.”

Eve swallows another laugh to blink at her friend. “Q, you went as Data. Even I know he’s the least attractive Star Trek character to ever have existed.”

She doesn’t catch his reply and decides to go easy on him. 

“So now you’re creating a super profile?”

Q leaps at the change of topic. “Yes – still me, but optimised for this ecosystem. The update went live two hours ago.”

His flair for the dramatic might be charming if Eve weren’t used to Double-oh agents. 

She balks nevertheless because Q’s patience is legendary, asking, “And?” 

Like flicking a switch, the man breaks into an enormous grin and hurries over to sit next to her, angling his laptop so she can see his bursting inbox. 

“Impressive, dear sir! So how soon are you going out?”

Q tilts his head at her. “I’m not. None of these have passed my minimum 900 point threshold yet.”

“Well, it’s only been two hours,” Eve says at length, instead of giving into her impulse and hitting him over the head with her mug to knock some sense into him. 

She has an ulterior motive, however. 

“Ignoring your mad scientist levels of dedication to online dating for a minute –”

“I’m being thorough.”

“- I was wondering how your job is going.”

Of course Q is too darn clever for any kind of subtlety to work, and after some back and forth, Eve resolves to show her hand. 

“I might know of a position that’s soon opening up that you might be suited for. It would be a challenge, that’s for sure.”

“At your export company?” Q snorts, derision dripping from his very word. 

“Oi, don’t knock it until you’ve been interviewed.”

“What even makes you think I’m interested in changing career paths? I’m perfectly all right at Keating Consolidated.”

“You’re getting bored,” Eve argues. “And after only eighteen months. I doubt supplying an international corporation with patents will become any more interesting in the future.”

“Well, one word and Google’s flying me to California. They’ve been after me since I hacked their servers. In my pyjamas.”

“Hardly,” Eve scoffs. “You’re too patriotic to work for the Americans. Besides, it wouldn’t take two years before you’re considering other offers. Mine’s better.”

Q’s gaze turns calculating. After a beat, he breathes, “I _knew_ it.”

She feigns ignorance. Q is too smart to continue his line of questioning. While she is fully aware her friend doesn’t believe her cover story any more than she believes it wasn’t him who introduced the virus that deleted everything to her ex-boyfriend’s computer, they both understand that she cannot tell the truth even if confronted. 

“So do I have your permission to throw your name into the hat?”

“Please tell me your employer has more sophisticated techniques of determining an applicant’s suitability.”

Eve just smirks. His interest is peaked; she smells victory.

*

As it turns out, said victory is twofold. 

Tanner did send Bond to the Caribbean, where the mission almost turned into a huge cock-up because the Double-oh thought seducing the mark’s wife was a splendid idea. 

“I swear on the Prime Minister’s knickers,” M grouses, “one day London will be in ruins and we’ll have 007’s libido to blame.”

“I believe such a betting pool is already in place, sir,” Eve quips, though instead of laugh her boss only scowls more. 

“What that man needs is a relationship,” Mallory announces. “The world will be infinitely better off once Bond has access to regular dalliances of a romantic persuasion.”

Thankfully, Eve already has an idea in that regard. Mallory’s endorsement offers the final push, and as soon as she’s back at her desk, she pulls up the fake profiles Q created and cross-references them against what she knows about James Bond. 

It could genuinely work. 

Eve starts counting down the hours until James is back from getting shot at in tropical weather. 

The agent returns to English soil the same day Eve hands over Q’s CV along with her recommendation letter and a cupcake to Jamal from Human Resources. She intercepts Bond during his escape from medical. 

“You’re in no condition to drive home,” she insists. 

It’s not even a lie – 007 cracked two ribs and suffered minor burns before completing his mission. He’s in too much pain to be allowed behind the wheel since the stubborn berk refused pain medication. 

Grumbling, James relinquishes the keys to his Aston Martin. His flat in Pimlico barely has any furniture, let alone any sort of homey feel to it. 

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Eve teases, allowing James to remove her coat. 

He is a lot less gentlemanly once she has explained how she’s going to cash in her favour. 

“Online dating?” he sneers. “My perfect match is just a click away?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Eve says, opening the man’s laptop. “I’m not talking about finding you a wife or husband. But a steady relationship might do you good.”

“I’m fine on my own.”

Eve pointedly traces her eyes across the Spartan décor. James argues for another fifteen minutes, yet in the end his debt to Eve outweighs his aversion to the plan. Bond pours them both some scotch and sprawls out next to her on the sofa as she creates an account for the man. 

“I’m almost 44,” James points out when she puts his age as 39.

“Be glad I’m not using your mental age,” is all Eve says, ignoring his protests. It’s not her fault if Q’s upper age limit forces her hand. “What’d you want me to write for occupation? Slayer of thugs, breaker of hearts?”

At least it elicits a laugh from James. 

“I’m typing, 007,” she threatens, moving her fingers at a glacial pace. 

“Put ‘arctic baby seal hunter’, for all I care.”

 _Huh… Q might find that amusing._

“Clever,” Eve declares. “I like it.”

That has the man lean up. “You’re joking.”

In response, Eve fills in ‘arctic baby seal hunter’ where the template asks for occupation. 

An hour and a half later, most of which James spent reading a thick hardcover, the profile for ShakenNotStirred is complete. Eve is grateful she actively listened when Q explained how this particular website’s algorithm works to match users to each other. She’s even more content about her impeccable memory that allows her to recall most of Q’s two-tier criteria, enabling her to adapt James’s one-phrase replies into descriptions that will earn her colleague 700 points at minimum. 

“Now all I need is a picture and your promise that you’ll take at least one of your matches out on a date, which you’ll treat with the appropriate gravitas.”

“If I do, will you let me finish my book in peace?”

“I solemnly swear.”

Eve makes James sit in the lonely chair in the corner of his living room, still in most of his suit but without a tie and his shirt open at the collar. Earlier that day, she scoured the depths of James’s file and found two other pictures, taken during an undercover assignment as a model, which she adds to the profile’s gallery. 

“I have your log-in details, so I’ll know whether or not you’re complying with my terms.”

James holds out her coat with a huff. “I do know how to change a password.”

“You enjoy my meddling too much to actually do that, though.”

“Goodnight, Miss Moneypenny.”

Eve sends him a parting smile and leaves him to his evening entertainment. She has done her share – the rest is up to the magic of algorithms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the [picture](https://40.media.tumblr.com/1c41da52f72e93537eb3a7f99356c41c/tumblr_o2jjrmbZVF1tcjckco7_500.jpg) Eve takes , and the ones she found ([x](https://40.media.tumblr.com/9ad9235a27aeb81561cca4fa74b3c127/tumblr_o2jjrmbZVF1tcjckco1_400.jpg), [x](https://41.media.tumblr.com/eceb649c4928063e3fcab0c459a9e03a/tumblr_o2jjrmbZVF1tcjckco8_1280.jpg)), in case, you know, anyone needs a reason to look at Daniel Craig... *winks*
> 
> Part II should be up soon :) If you enjoyed this so far, I'd love to hear your thoughts?


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a fic where my ~~first~~ second chapter count proves correct. This fic is not that fic. 
> 
> Anyway, after a brief detour for [Coldwave Week](http://archiveofourown.org/series/423265), I’m now back with a vengeance =) Super special thanks to [merlenhiver](http://archiveofourown.org/users/merlenhiver/pseuds/merlenhiver) for being awesome and honest and constructive in her critique!
> 
> PS: I have written out both James and Q’s online dating profile, but lack the photoshop abilities to turn it into something visually appealing. ~~I might add~~ I added them as a fourth chapter, for those who want to read them!

Eve is keenly aware that her current mission requires both finesse and perfect timing. If either James or Q suspect that she’s up to something, she can forget about her grand plans of getting her best friend both a job and a boyfriend in one fell swoop.

It’s a good thing then that – temporarily killing 007 aside – she has always been brilliant in the field. And quite frankly, navigating the intricacies of the SIS offices is not that different from navigating mine fields and shadow economies. 

“This is blackmail,” Jamal protests meekly. 

“No, this is a bribe,” Eve corrects, sliding the slips of paper across the table. 

And this is why she remembers when co-workers bemoan their ballet-obsessed daughter didn’t get any tickets to the three-night-only guest performance at the Royal Opera House, and why she never, ever actually declines invitations that her boss doesn’t accept. 

Jamal stares at the tickets, unblinking, for several seconds. His hand twitches, and Eve knows she’s won. 

“Your friend’s in the final selection.” She arches an eyebrow, prompting her colleague to specify, “They’re going to call him today to schedule an assessment for the weekend.”

“That was quick,” she can’t help but comment. After all, she only handed over his application twenty-four hours ago. 

“Might have something to do with the glowing reference you wrote the chap. Sounds like he’s minutes away from walking on water.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. Ta,” Eve says with a grin, and swans out of Jamal’s office. 

By the time she meets Q for lunch, Human Resources has already contacted him, so Q is brimming with anticipation. Most of his attention is focussed on trying to get Eve to tell him what to expect during whatever tests he’ll have to take between Friday evening and noon on Saturday, which she deflects. 

“I’m just a PA, remember? Recruiting practices aren’t something I’m privy to. But what I _can_ talk about is your other project…” 

She steeples her fingers and rests her chin on top while projecting an air of unabridged curiosity. 

Her friend falls for it. 

“Oh, I haven’t had a chance to check… hang on…” 

Q produces his tablet and a few swipes and tabs later, the screen shows his new matches on a very familiar site. 

Eve leers at James’s picture. “I want that one.”

“This isn’t about you,” Q chides, swatting her hand away. “ShakenNotStirred, 39. Think he’s lying?”

“Looks younger, actually. Maybe he has more photos?”

As expected, Q’s lips quirk at the picture of James in a three-piece suit perched near a bathroom sink and smirking at the camera, his reflection showing off the dashing figure he cuts in the garments. And just as Eve predicted, Q blinks when the close-up appears, James’s piercing blue eyes prominent as they look at something off screen, soft smile curling his lips. 

“Former Royal Navy officer, current man of mystery,” Q reads the headline Eve eventually settled on, then chokes. “ _Arctic baby seal hunter?!_ He must be joking.” 

Eve feigns being horrified. “I’m sure. No one in their right mind would admit to doing _that_ for a living…”

She reads the profile over Q’s shoulder, noting the impressed tilt of his head at the many languages James speaks, and smirking at ‘Four things my friends say about me’. 

“Did he put any deal breakers?” she asks, nudging Q’s shoulder with her own. 

He complies and scrolls down to the respective section, the only one James was actually vocal about when Eve asked for his input. 

“Clingy partners,” Q reads, “Laziness, and elitism, though a healthy dose of arrogance if earned is appreciated.”

Eve chuckles. “Good thing you’ve got the doctorates and patents to prove you’re allowed to be a prick sometimes.”

“Oi, I’m – ” He stops, apparently realising how much of a lie negating that one would be. 

Once they’ve reached the bottom of the profile, Eve urges Q to apply his own algorithm. 

“Or don’t you have that on your tablet?” 

Q sends her a look that broadcasts how ridiculous that question was, and a few taps later, the programme is analysing James’s page.

“You should patent it, you know,” Eve suggests to bridge the pause. “I’m sure lots of people would pay horrendous sums for seventy-two data points.”

Q rolls his eyes. “Like I need any more patents. Besides, filing them is a nuisance. I can think of better uses for my time.”

“Like going on a date with ShakenNotStirred?”

“We don’t even know how many points –” In that moment, the programme finishes with a low _bing_ , and Q’s eyes widen. “Well. It appears it suffices for a chat.”

He turns the device around and it takes all of Eve’s self-control not to slip up and blow her cover when she sees the glorious 791 points on the display. 

She fixes her best friend with an expectant gaze. “Go on.”

“What, _now_?”

“I want to see how you do it.” 

Flattery, in small quantities, works wonders on Q, and Eve judged the situation correctly for he clicks the necessary button on the page. His fingers fly over the screen as he types, though he shows the message to Eve, heaving the sigh of exasperated friends to overly curious people. 

**VirusInTheData:** The fact that it matched a vegetarian with an arctic baby seal hunter is all you need to know about the sophistication of this platform’s algorithms.

 _Oh yes, that will do nicely,_ Eve decides, and hits ‘send’ before Q can rethink it. 

“And now you wait until he responds?”

“Obviously,” Q drawls. “Based on his reply I’m either going to wait or engage right away.”

Eve is dialling James’s number as soon as Q is out of earshot and inviting herself over to dinner. The agent grumbles and protests, but when she arrives at his flat for the second evening in a row, she finds he actually cooked, so he cannot be too cross with her. 

She ushers him onto his sofa once the dishes are taken care of, cradling his open computer in her lap. 

She gives a low whistle as she sees his bursting inbox. “Aren’t you Mr Popular.”

James seems unimpressed. 

“If you don’t stop me, I’ll select someone myself.”

Her threat is met with a huff and a dry, “The Caribbean wasn’t worth this.”

“Too late.” 

She begins scrolling and alternates between smirking to herself and glancing at James, until the man cracks and steals his laptop back from her. She shuffles closer and watches as his eyes quickly slide down the list of clichéd and obnoxious usernames, until… 

“Is that a Sherlock reference?”

Eve manages to suppress a delighted giggle. Q’s handle, VirusInTheData, is something he deemed both fitting and sophisticated enough to scare off the really daft men on the site, as well as a test of how up-to-date someone’s awareness of British television is. 

“What did he write?”

James opens the message – and _snorts_. 

Eve has to bite her tongue to keep from squealing. 

“Are you going to reply?”

James turns his head. “You’re aware you only get to bully me into one date.”

“Then pull up his profile!” she urges, and reads the optimised version Q is so proud of from her position on James’s side.

“Look,” she points out, “he wants to buy and restore a vintage car with his unexpected bonus. You can pool the money and upgrade your Aston Martin.”

“Our _hypothetical money_ ,” James deadpans, and Eve’s mind provides a brief flash of how annoying James and Q are going to be as a couple. 

_These idiots deserve each other._

Now all that is left for Eve to do is to ensure the two of them meet prior to when Q might show up at MI6 after undoubtedly acing the assessment tests and interviews this weekend. The rest, if her intuition is right, will take care of itself. 

*

It’s late when Q returns home, even by his standards. 

“Well, if I’m taking Friday afternoon off for some test,” he explains to Linux as she rubs against his legs, “I’ll have to adjust my time management.”

Since Turing only seems to realise he can actively ask for caresses whenever he sees Linux do it, soon both of Q’s hands are occupied until his pets decide food is a lot more interesting than him. 

Rolling his eyes, Q opens his personal laptop on the kitchen counter and check his messages, something he didn’t get a chance to while he was wired in at work. At least that’s what Eve calls that state in which Q’s world narrows to the lines of code or specs on the screen in front of him for hours on end until he’s finished. Or until someone shakes him hard enough to startle him. Well, sometimes his bladder interrupts him, too, but over the years Q has mastered control over all his bodily functions when coding.

He has a reply from ShakenNotStirred, dated one hour previously. The man in question appears to be online, betrayed by the green dot next to his user name (obviously Q has a plug-in that hides his activity). 

**VirusInTheData:** The fact that it matched a vegetarian with an arctic baby seal hunter is all you need to know about the sophistication of this platform’s algorithms.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** I take it your own would be so much better, then. 

Q grins at the screen. _And he’s got bite in him. Lovely._

**VirusInTheData:** The conditional in your sentence is highly unnecessary. Naturally I wrote my own. 

He turns back to his tablet and the blueprints he’s supposed to revise, but before he makes any more headway, there’s another reply. 

**ShakenNotStirred:** Then the site’s algorithm can’t be so bad when yours came to the same conclusion.  
**VirusInTheData:** Touché. But I might just be humouring you.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** I might have been forced into contacting you by a bothersome friend. 

Q abandons all pretence and shifts the sliver of attention still on his tablet fully to the conversation. 

**VirusInTheData:** Why me?  
**ShakenNotStirred:** An appreciation for Moriarty goes a long way.  
**VirusInTheData:** I applaud your cultural expertise.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Will you feed this intel to your algorithm?  
**VirusInTheData:** Yes. But don’t worry, it’ll have a positive outcome.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** As in?  
**VirusInTheData:** I continue talking to you.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** You mean typing.  
**VirusInTheData:** Let me get some ice for that burn. You didn’t say you were this pedantic on your profile.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** I didn’t say many things on my profile.  
**VirusInTheData:** You could tell them to me in person.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Are you suggesting a date?  
**VirusInTheData:** My algorithm approves.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Do your cats?

Q glances over to where his flatmates are munching happily. 

**VirusInTheData:** They’re distracted by food. Besides, I’m their owner, not the other way around.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** From what I’ve heard, that’s a grand delusion all cat owners subscribe to.  
**VirusInTheData:** … You might be onto something.

As he waits for the man’s next response, Q realises he’s been grinning for the last few minutes. Even without running the algorithm he knows this one reaches the 900 points date threshold. 

(Later that night, when he actually calculates it, Q finds that ShakenNotStirred has scored an impressive 982.)

 **ShakenNotStirred:** I’d like to meet you in person. See if you’re equally snarky without a keyboard in front of you.  
**VirusInTheData:** I assure you, I am. If you’re as suave in real life remains to be seen.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Oh, I am. When are you free?  
**VirusInTheData:** I have a job interview until Saturday around noon.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Lunch in the city?  
**VirusInTheData:** Pragmatic suggestion.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Why wait when you can have instant gratification?  
**VirusInTheData:** Hedonists weep from beyond the grave.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Their suffering brings me pleasure. I believe I’m still acting in their interests.  
**VirusInTheData:** Intriguing point. 

Chuckling, Q then changes the topic to the issue of the restaurant and is positively surprised when his chat partner suggests a small pub that is said to have great vegetarian options among its offers. 

**ShakenNotStirred:** I’m James, for the record.  
**VirusInTheData:** And you don’t go by Jim?  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Remind me to glare at you for even thinking that when I see you.  
**VirusInTheData:** I shall.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** What do I call you?  
**VirusInTheData:** Q.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** I assume there’s a story behind it.  
**VirusInTheData:** You assume correctly.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** You didn’t mention you’re a tease.  
**VirusInTheData:** I didn’t mention many things, unquote.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** More of a vague citation than a quote.  
**VirusInTheData:** Bite me.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Please tell me you at least know how to use the Oxford comma.  
**VirusInTheData:** They shall pry it out of my cold, stiff, and dead hands. … Have I passed your test?  
**ShakenNotStirred:** The second of many.  
**VirusInTheData:** What was the first?  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Whether or not you type in full sentences.  
**VirusInTheData:** ur adobs  
**ShakenNotStirred:** I own a gun.  
**VirusInTheData:** I’m afraid the internet doesn’t work like that.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Someone should look into that.  
**VirusInTheData:** I’ll add it to my list of potential projects.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Right underneath world domination?  
**VirusInTheData:** I resent the sarcasm in that remark. I’m a dangerous individual.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** So am I.  
**VirusInTheData:** I guess we’ll see who’s worse on Saturday.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Indeed.  
**VirusInTheData:** Have a nice night, James.  
**ShakenNotStirred:** Likewise, Q. 

He blinks, processing the truly riveting conversation, until the green dot next to James’s handle disappears. No inappropriate comments, no narking about his dietary specifications… hell, he even joked about Ancient Greek philosophers without sounding like an utter prick about it. 

Linux and Turing pull Q out of his ruminating as they explode into movement and tear across the flat, up their cat trees and back into the kitchen where they collapse into a ball of scuffling fur. 

*

The job interview takes place at a hotel in the financial district. Q is one of approximately twenty applicants, of whom he identifies at least eleven as actors or undercover personnel. 

He vows to trust nothing and no one for the following eighteen hours, a resolution that is cemented when a Major Boothroyd vaguely insinuates what kind of job might be waiting for the last person standing. 

The first test requires handwritten responses. Q once developed a software that analyses handwriting, so he knows what the graphologists will look out for and subsequently alternates between handwriting styles throughout his answers while barely holding back a mischievous cackle. 

At least the next segment takes place at a computer, since Q’s hands are cramping from all the writing. 

He survives the evening group exercises attempting to determine his capabilities of working in a team by mentally creating online dating profiles for his competition. They’re required to stay overnight – certainly part of the assessment process – and Q ends up sharing the room with a bloke called Bill Tanner who is maintaining a decent charade of being an actual applicant. 

As a courtesy, Q pretends to be fooled. 

He’s almost (no, he’s absolutely) disappointed when no sudden alarm or fake terrorist attack wakes them during the night, which only heightens Q’s paranoia the following morning. 

His hyper vigilance pays off when Jamal, one of the HR staff overseeing the event, hands out flash disks with their next assignment. Q carefully disconnects the laptop he was issued from all networks before inserting it into the port. 

“Quite a clever move. Can you explain your reasoning to me?”

The man seated across from Q is Gareth Mallory. Q did some research prior to the assessment and found Mallory is the only member of MI6 whose identity is public knowledge. Bill Tanner is sitting in a chair to their right, abandoning all pretence of being anything other than a spook. 

Q huffs because really, isn’t it obvious? 

“You’re trying to recruit someone for a secret government agency. You’d be daft not to test how cautious we are.”

Mallory’s features remain unreadable. “A friend of yours recommended you. Did she provide any hints as to what the job might entail?”

Q shakes his head. 

“But you suspected?”

“Please,” Q scoffs, “anyone genuinely believing that Eve’s nothing more than a common PA should have their head checked.”

At Mallory’s request, Q rattles off the reasons behind his doubts, leaving at least Tanner visibly impressed. Or well, as impressed as spies can be by above-average perception skills.

“Are you aware you’re being headhunted by every major tech company on the globe?” is Mallory’s next question. 

Q shrugs. “Those offers mostly end up in my spam folder.”

“Why didn’t Keating Consolidated?”

Q tilts his head at his potential boss. “You’re an intelligence agency. Shouldn’t you already know?”

Instead of a scowl his insubordination usually prompts, this time it earns him a wry smile. 

“The community outreach programmes,” Mallory says. “Every firm you’ve worked for since graduating poured some of their profits into local projects, like the one that introduced you to coding and your sister to acting.”

 _Someone has done their homework_ , Q thinks as he nods.

“We need people like you, Mr Bradshaw,” Mallory continues. “Those who aren’t in it for the money, but for the good of our country. We can offer you a challenge and the opportunity to protect your home as well as leave a lasting mark in history from behind the curtains of global and domestic politics.” 

“Does this riveting speech mean I got the job?” 

It slips out before Q can bite his tongue. Tanner almost laughs, so that’s good, he reckons.

Meanwhile Mallory has adopted an air of fond exasperation – something tells Q that might become the man’s default reaction to him in the future – and explains that, yes, he’s the best candidate and MI6 is prepared to offer him a position. They’ll be in touch with the details since, uh, Q is still technically bound to Keating Consolidated by his contract. Surely that won’t be too much of a problem for the British government? 

“You fathom correctly,” Eve confirms, her voice raised enough to carry over the closed door of the bathroom stall. 

Since Q impressed his future employers enough to end the interviews early, he has the time to change for his date in peace instead of in the back of Eve’s car, which she volunteered as a mode of transportation. Q would be touched by the act of kindness if he didn’t know that woman lives off air and curiosity. 

“Are we sure about that outfit?”

Q glances from Eve to his reflection. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Its main feature is a cardigan.”

“I like cardigans. If James has a problem with my sense of fashion, maybe he’s not as suitable as a future partner as the math led us to believe.”

“How about a nice jacket instead?”

“I just _left_ the job interview.”

Eve throws up her hands in defeat, then descends on his hair. Whenever Q tries to whip it into shape, the endeavour is doomed from the start, but for some reason it obeys Eve’s every tweak. 

Maybe she really is a goddess, sent to earth to aid Q’s plan for world domination. 

“I expect a detailed report whenever you get off.” Eve’s smirk morphs into a leer. “In any sense of the word.”

“If I wanted a shag, I’m going about it wrong.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re doing background checks on one night stands between the dance floor and the back room.”

Q freezes, utterly guilty. Eve spends the entire way to her car laughing so hard she begins drawing stares. 

*

Within the first few minutes of their date, Q learns several things about James. 

For one, he’s even more handsome in person. Like Q he’s wearing a shirt and slacks, yet where Q has donned his favourite cardigan, James chose a waistcoat that looks just as bespoke as the rest of his attire. 

He’s also a gentleman, opening the door to the cosy pub, but perceptive as well because he neither pulls out Q’s chair nor offers to assistance with his spring coat – he must have noticed Q’s bewilderment at the door.

James is inherently friendly to the service, smiling at their waitress even before the woman greeted them. 

His hands, however, aren’t calloused enough for baby seal hunting. 

“Maybe I get bi-weekly manicures,” James suggests. 

Q’s head snaps up. “Did I say that out loud?” 

“Yes.” Thankfully, James is smiling at him. It’s a nice smile. 

“Why would a seal hunter get bi-weekly manicures, though?”

James’s reply is immediate. “Appearance. Baby seals don’t sell themselves.”

Q chuckles as he finally opens the menu. “You’re not going to tell me what you really do anytime soon, are you?”

That prompts a shake of the head and a dry, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you” that makes Q snort. 

Ever the gentleman, James lets Q order first, then surprises him by opting for a vegetarian omelette as well. _Considerate._

“How was your interview?” 

“Successful,” Q says, mentally wincing at how smug he sounds. “I only have to determine when my current employer’s going to release me.”

“Where’s the new position?” 

Q sends a coy smile across the table. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” James has a nice laugh, too. “Well, or rather have you killed. I mean, I know my way around a gun but…”

When he trails off, James wonders, “You aren’t a pacifist, are you?”

“Oh no. I understand that sometimes, a trigger has to be pulled.”

“Or not pulled,” James adds. 

Q concedes the point with a tilt of his head just as the waitress brings their drinks. 

*

Conversation flows just as easily between them as messages in a chat window. James is indeed as suave in person as he is online, always has a reply on the tip of his quick tongue. He’s also surprisingly apt at networked security, or at least knows some theory, which is another strike in the plus column for him in more than one way, seeing as it adds even more mystery to what exactly the man does for a living. 

Whatever it is, it leaves ample time for reading.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Q says. “I only saw the film.” 

“On a tiny laptop screen?” 

“Oh, my tablet is perfectly sufficient for such purposes.” 

James’s expression is as sour as a lemon. “You’re joking.” 

Q manages to keep his face straight for another moment before he sniggers. “You looked just about ready to drag me to a theatre. I couldn’t resist.” He takes a second to compose himself. “I actually do own a beautiful telly. Built it myself.” 

“I thought you’re a programmer?” 

“I dabble in engineering when the fancy strikes.” 

“Is that where your interest in restoring cars comes from?”

It takes a moment for Q to remember what James is referring to. “No, that’s on my Pa. He’s a mechanic. Well, was.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“What?” Then Q catches on. “Oh, no, he’s still alive, both my parents are actually. But he, uh, had a stroke two years ago. He’s not completely self-sufficient anymore, and my folks had to move since our flat wasn't terribly accessible so now I've got a mortgage - and you don’t want to know that.” 

“Quite the contrary. I just can’t contribute much to this topic.” 

Q blinks, surprised at the sad tone of James’s voice. The merest hint of a shadow has fallen over his face, and Q might not have noticed if he hadn’t been so focused on the other man. 

“Well,” Q begins, “I have almost as many stories about my family as I do about my cats, so telling me to go on might be something you’ll regret.” 

“You have a sister,” James prompts, which Q takes as consent to relate some lighter stories to counter the rather sombre mood. 

He gets a few highlights from James days with the Royal Navy in return, told in that wonderfully low baritone and tinged with mirth. Q is genuinely disappointed when they reach the end of their meal. 

“Why don't we go for a walk?”

“Are you a mind reader?” Q blurts. “Is that your mysterious job?” 

“Maybe. Is that a yes?” 

Q nods eagerly - okay, over-eagerly, though he thinks James is still at the stage where he considers it endearing - and signals their waitress. When she comes, Q promptly snatches the bill. 

James arches an eyebrow. 

“You can get the tea,” Q offers. 

“I prefer coffee.” 

“And you consider yourself English?”

“I hail from Scotland, actually.” 

Q feigns outrage as he hands over his credit card to the amused waitress. 

*

Walking along the Thames in the summer sun with James is more fun than Q would’ve expected. They alternate between making fun of tourists and trading more anecdotes, get drinks from a cart Q didn’t even notice until James stopped him with a hand on his arm. 

They’re close enough to Big Ben to hear it when the clock strikes six. James is showing off his sense of balance on a thin rail that Q has no idea why it’s even there, but it’s highly entertaining. The young couple from Taiwan agrees, he reckons, since they’ve been filming for the past few minutes. 

Q spares a glance for the clock and promptly does a double take. “Hang on, didn’t we just leave the restaurant?” 

“Three hours ago, yes.” 

James’s smirk is decidedly smug. 

“Well, you better think fast if you want this to go on,” Q says. “I get cranky when I spend more than eight hours away from my laptop.”

The other man jumps to the ground with more grace than should be legal, at least in Q’s humble opinion, since he’s having a hard enough time keeping his hands to himself and off those chiselled features without such antics. Then James bows to the filming couple. 

“You really are a five-year-old,” Q remarks as drily as he can with James grinning at him. 

“Is that going to be a problem?”

Q tilts his head. “Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether it grows on me or annoys me.”

Obviously, Q isn’t fooling anyone, least of all the man currently aiming a cocky smirk at him and stepping closer. James also smells really nice, Q recently discovered, and someone as confident as him would certainly be great at –

“How about I convince you while we’re cooking dinner?”

“Huh?” is Q’s eloquent reply, thoughts still on hypothetical snogging. 

There’s a glint in James’s eyes that makes Q believe he knows exactly what had Q this distracted.

“My flat isn’t too far. Let’s stop by the shops, see what we’re in the mood for, and you can get your fix,” James glances at Q’s laptop bag, “while I’m cooking. Since apparently I don’t want your help there.”

“No, you really don’t,” Q confirms, his mind running through a quick calculation and concluding that yes, that sounds absolutely lovely. 

*

Grocery shopping and following James to his flat proves to be a well of new information. For one, James has refined tastes but is surprisingly quick about selecting produce – Q wonders how ‘incredible perception skills’ play into whatever job James has – yet when Q chooses an avocado, James takes one look at it and sends him back. After that, Q doesn’t get to pick out food anymore. 

He also learns that James’s charm extends to _everyone_ , even foul-mooded cashiers whose shoulders seem to slump a little less after James takes his credit card back. Q is almost glad James flat is in such disarray, full of partially unpacked boxes and a truly ugly porcelain dog, if only to add anything to the negative column. 

“I could make disparaging remarks about Deadpool?” James suggests, his lips curling. 

_Bollocks._ “I’m talking aloud again, aren’t I.” 

At James’s nod Q sighs and slumps against the fridge, eyes closed. His head gives a dull thump as it connects with the stainless steel. 

“And now you're standing in my way.” 

Q is startled enough by the proximity of the statement to make a rather embarrassing sound that has James’s smirk widen. _Bastard._

“Did you learn those stealth skills at the ABSHA?” Q grouses, making room for James to get the precious cheese-with-a-name-he-cannot-pronounce into cooler spheres. 

“ABSHA?” James parrots back. 

“Arctic Baby Seal Hunting Academy,” Q deadpans. “Obviously.” 

He belatedly realises that he’s standing precisely where James needs to go if he wants to take care of the rest of the perishables, though at that point it's too late since the man is already stepping into his personal space. 

“Obviously,” James echoes, voice and eyes dancing with mirth and something much baser. 

Q's throat is suddenly tight. For two seconds they’re both silent, facing off between the kitchen counter and the table, until Q proves he is a weak, weak man and let’s his eyes flicker to James’s lips. 

The kiss that follows doesn’t come as a surprise – instant gratification, and all that, Q reasons – and neither does the fact that James is an expert at this. His lips are soft but slightly chapped, creating a thrilling dichotomy that extends to everything else, too. James’s hand touching Q’s jaw is gentle, though the way the other man crowds him against the fridge is anything but. 

Q’s spine tingles when he feels hard muscles through too many layers of fabric and he wraps his arms around James, pulling him closer. He gets a delighted hum in response, giving way to a startled moan when Q twists one hand in James’s hair with more pressure than strictly necessary. 

Curiosity sparked, Q experiments. He digs the fingers of his other hand into James’s back as he sucks hard on his bottom lip with just the touch of teeth. James hisses into his mouth, yet at the same time burrows impossibly closer. Q scrapes his teeth along that chiselled jaw that’s been teasing him all afternoon next, and the remaining distance between them evaporates when James shifts his hips. Q gasps as he feels the outline of James’s erection against his own. 

The other man’s control is slipping, Q can tell. He strengthens his grip on James’s hair, turns the next kiss rougher and drags his nails along a seam of the waistcoat until James rests his head on Q’s shoulders with a satisfying shudder. 

“If we don’t stop now,” he whispers, voice rough with arousal, “the food will spoil.”

“You really take maintaining the cool chain quite seriously,” Q manages to respond despite the lust beginning to cloud his mind. 

“You clearly don’t.” 

“Afraid not.”

He feels James smile against his neck. When he pulls back, his expression can only be described as predatory. When James hums and rolls his hips, it’s Q’s turn to bite back a moan.

“You’re a bad influence,” James adds.

“I beg to – oh god…” Q trails off, because James just slid to his knees in front of him, intent inescapably clear. 

Deft fingers make quick work of the button of his trousers and before Q can do more than clutch James’s head for support, he feels the slow drag of a tongue against his shaft. 

James is devious, Q soon discovers. He alternates between quickly swallowing him down and slowly pulling back again, sucking just hard enough to make Q mutter frustrated curses as his grip on his self-control falters. 

It’s by design, that’s for sure – when Q’s hips eventually snap forward and the head of his erection hits the back of James’s throat, all the other man does is hum contentedly. The resulting vibrations only stoke the fire in Q’s groin. 

His hands clench in James’s hair and he pushes the man down, trying to toe the line between too much and just right and ending up thrusting into the wet heat of James’s mouth until his rhythm stutters. 

James pulls off him then, and retrieves an honest-to-god handkerchief from somewhere beyond Q’s current mental capabilities to determine. Q can’t remember the last time he laughed as he came, spilling himself all over the tissue.

James leers up at him, pupils blown with desire. 

“Get up here,” Q tells him, though as James is rising to his feet Q uses his momentum and switches their positions. Now it’s James whose back is pressed against the stainless steel of the fridge and Q who’s pinning him in place. 

Judging by the amused shine of James’s eyes and the raw strength Q feels underneath his hands, he fathoms he only actually managed to do that because the other man allowed it. 

Q may not be as smooth or gracious as James, but he’s a dab hand at watching his partners and adjusting his ministrations accordingly. James, however, presents a challenge in that his first impulse seems to be to hide his tells. Whatever he really does for a living must require a unique ability of filtering what others perceive of him, Q notes with mounting curiosity. 

The beads of precome James is leaking are the only lubricant Q has, though the added friction seems more than fine with James, whose hands are gripping the edges of the fridge door behind him. His knuckles whiten further as Q tightens his grip and slides his free hand back into James’s hair, fascinated by the way the light pain translates to pleasure in James’s mind.

Q wonders how deep this kink goes, or if it’s something else entirely.

A sharp “Close,” puts a stop to Q’s ruminating. James’s eyes are shut, his lips parted. Q commits every micro-expression that follows to memory: from the way James’s entire body grows taut as a bowstring seconds before his release to the low rumble in his chest once the aftershocks have washed over him. 

“I can’t wait to take you to bed,” James says with something like veneration colouring his tone before stealing a kiss. 

“Who says I’ll let you?” Q challenges. Later he’ll blame his snarky response on the endorphins coursing through his systems. 

James doesn’t miss a beat. “You will.”

He does. Maybe it was the magic James worked in the kitchen, or giving Q time to check in with his laptop… Well, on second thought it was probably the extensive snogging session against the sink that left Q thrusting against James’s hip like he’s 19, not 29. 

James has long since shed his waistcoat, so all Q gets to take off him is his shirt on the way to the bedroom, but he’s not even four buttons down when James’s lips are on his again and Q loses track of clothing for a bit. The next thing his mind registers is James drinking in the sight of him, stripped to the bone with his erection jutting out almost obscenely. 

“My turn,” Q decides, picking up where he left off. It’s difficult since James can’t seem to keep his hands to himself, though eventually the other man’s clothes are gone and Q gets to admire the body only ever hinted at by spanning fabric. 

The scars only add to the appeal. 

Q steps up to James, eyes cataloguing the sheer number of them marring his skin, some barely noticeable, others thrown into stark relief by the low light from the lamp on the nightstand. 

He traces a particular prominent one on James’s flank with gentle fingers. 

“Can you match them to baby seals?” 

“Each and every one of them,” James replies. 

His tone is light, but Q can see the way his shoulders tense just so. He decides to drop the topic and instead nudges him towards the bed where he maps every inch of James’s body with touch and tongue, tracing a line down his spine and dipping lower. 

James doesn’t whimper or writhe as Q builds a rhythm, doesn’t plead or moan; all Q has to judge James’s pleasure are the minute shifts and twitches that ripple through James’s body. Q is instantly addicted to the sheer rush of coaxing a reaction from a man so versed in concealing it. 

Q’s world has narrowed down to a taunt ring of muscle, loosened by his strokes and swipes, so he’s completely startled when a condom hits his head. 

Q tears it open with his teeth. 

“Something you saw on telly?” James chuckles. 

“That’s a great move and you know it, James,” Q sniffs with put-upon gravitas – or as much gravitas as anyone can muster when rolling on a condom. 

“If you say so, sunshine.”

Q feels his shoulders shake with his responding laugh – he’s rarely known men who make him laugh during sex, and that James is able to only constitutes yet another merit in his favour. 

A sudden move, and Q finds himself on his back. James is straddling him, hands already on his cock and sinking down oh-so-slowly. Q’s ensuing curses elicit a smile from his partner, yet don’t prompt him into getting a bloody move on. 

Q thrusts up, but finds James’s thighs have too tight a grip on his hips.

“James,” he complains, only to be met with an outright smirk. 

“We have all night.” As if to underscore his point, James stills as Q bottoms out. 

“You should’ve mentioned your stamina in your profile.”

“You’re welcome to reverse our positions.”

“Less snark, more shagging,” Q snaps, because he’s surrounded by wonderfully tight heat that’s clenching and grinding just enough to be titillating, though nowhere near satisfying. 

James _finally_ takes mercy on him and begins to move in earnest, setting an increasingly brutal pace, peppered with kisses and nails leaving crescent-shaped marks on each other’s skin that’ll be gone before midnight. Q’s orgasm is nothing but another step on the trajectory, short but powerful, and he feels streaks of James’s come on his stomach before he even had the chance to open his eyes again. 

“Can you stay or do you have to feed your cats?” 

Q has to clear his throat to be able to speak. “How’re you this eloquent right now?” When all James does is arch a smug eyebrow, Q continues, “No, they have a semi-automatic feeding station.”

“Sounds daunting.”

“It’s one of my patents and a pinnacle of modern technology,” Q shoots back, without much heat behind it. 

“If you say so,” James drawls, rolling off the bed and returning moments later with a damp towel. 

Q’s lips twitch. “Is that engraved as well?”

“My handkerchief wasn’t engraved.”

“I saw a seal,” Q points out, then he’s thinking about artic baby seals again and starts chuckling. 

It takes James a second to catch on, though when he does his smile is more fond than exasperated. “Now who’s the five-year-old?”

“Shut up and get the lube.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, this was fun :) Hope you enjoyed it as well?
> 
>  ~~Part III will follow shortly! In the meantime~~ Allow me to point you towards another (completed) 00Q fic of mine I’m really, really proud of – [Firesale, or: How The Q-Branch Minions Saved London](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6247264).


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, folks – finally! James Bond is a bloody drama queen and the one to blame for the delay on this and the way it, uh, escalated in length. (Though to be fair, Q also took his time to find a Double-oh/real life dictionary…) 
> 
> Endless thanks to the ever-patient merlenhiver for holding my hand through three re-writes. Thanks to your concrit I’m finally fully convinced of this chapter!

Eve is a patient woman. 

She once spent three months conditioning the colleagues passing her desk to pick up bonbons, only to swap them all for Plasticine on April Fools’ Day. 

Too bad she’s also more curious than a cat, so by Saturday evening, she is burning to know how James and Q’s date went. Incredibly well, is Eve’s guess, considering Q hasn’t texted, emailed, or even called. Not once. And it’s been _hours_. 

Eve itches to contact him, yet resolutely refuses – Q has a penchant for leaving his mobile lying about, and all it takes is one glance at the gadget on James’s part when one of Eve’s messages is lighting up the screen for the Double-oh to put two and two together. All of Eve’s hard work would have been in vain, and 007 would go back to blowing up cultural landmarks overseas and giving Mallory grey hairs. 

So Eve keeps her fingers off her phone and distracts herself with wine and Netflix. 

When Q finally calls, it’s eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. Eve is reading up on briefings for work with her mobile within reach, but makes herself wait before she picks up and greets him. 

“Another hour and you’d have had a twelve-hour date.” 

Q chuckles. “How long’ve you been standing next to your phone?” 

“Only three rings,” she concedes, since it’s pointless to lie. “How’s the walk of shame?”

“Sunny.” The smile is blatant in his voice. Obviously he isn’t just talking about the weather. “He’s coming over tonight to meet Linux and Turing.”

This is better than Eve has ever dared imagine. “Should I be looking for venues? Calling florists?”

“Down, girl,” Q quips. “And what makes you think you’d be our wedding planner?”

“Oh, call it a hunch.” Eve is glad no one’s around to see her smirk. “Now, come on! Details.”

Eve is familiar with James’s modus operandi when it comes to seduction, and it’s illuminating to hear a first-hand account of an actual date whose sole purpose wasn’t to gain intel on some mark or other. What’s more, Q sounds utterly smitten. 

“I expect a similarly detailed account tomorrow during lunch.”

“Oh,” Q says, by the sound of it fumbling with his keys. “I’m afraid I won’t make it tomorrow. Last day at KC; I’ll be completing all remaining projects remotely after that. I’m to meet Mr Tanner on Tuesday at nine for orientation.”

Sometimes, Eve can’t believe her luck. “That’s great! Bill and I take lunch together sometimes; we’ll teach you how to survive the cafeteria.”

A pause. “Maybe I should pack a lunch. Or get James to do it. He’s a wonderful cook.”

“Really? Why didn’t you mention that before?” Eve teases. The answering eye-roll is almost audible. 

“Remind me to change the font of your work computer to Comic Sans as soon as I’m hooked up to the system.”

“You’d never,” Eve says. “Want me to come over? Help tidy up?”

Q insists he has it covered, though, and Eve contemplates calling James next. She discards the idea immediately – no need to trigger the man’s spy senses with being overly snoopy. 

Besides, she has a much, much better plan. 

“Now, what about the favour you mentioned?” 

Svetlana is the deputy head physician at the Centre for National Security and one of Eve’s closer friends at the agency. She also has a crush on the owner of a recently opened cake shop and café near Millbank, which is where they’re currently sipping tea. 

“I need you to bring Bond’s med eval forward a little.”

Svetlana seems weary. “How far forward?”

“Tuesday. Nine-thirty.” Eve sends her a smile. “Please, Lana?”

Her friend slips into Russian as she curses. “Won’t be easy. I’ll –”

Suddenly, Svetlana’s cheeks redden and she raises a tentative hand, waving awkwardly. A quick glance over Eve’s shoulder proves her suspicion. 

“He clearly likes you back.”

Lana ducks her head. “He’s nice to all his customers.”

“Your foam’s fluffier than mine.”

“Coincidence.”

Eve uncrosses her legs, leaning forward. “I’m sure enough to stake the favour on this.”

Eve tries not to be insulted by the snort her suggestion prompts, but at least Lana agrees to a deal. Three minutes later, Eve returns from the counter with a complimentary cupcake and the bloke’s phone number. 

Lana’s eyes grow wide as the saucer of her cup. “You’re a goddess!” 

“I get that a lot,” Eve says, unable to suppress a delighted cackle. 

*

When they first moved to the CNS building, Eve thought the winding staircase that’s the defining feature of the lobby – and every other floor, if one is splitting hairs – was a pretentious, utterly ridiculous feature. Whatever the architect was smoking when planning it had to have been the proverbial ‘good stuff’. 

Now, however, she loves the daft thing. She gets more work done walking up or down than she ever would if she took the lift instead and emailed people about signatures, reminders, or the less official aspects of their work day. Yet Eve prefers it when she’s the one doing the hounding. 

“I need the updated budget plan for next quarter, Eve,” Wenham from Accounting calls over his shoulder, adding as he turns around on his way up the slope, “I’ve sent three mails since Thursday.”

“I’m aware, Daryl.” 

Eve slows her pace in anticipation. Three seconds later, Wenham has caught up with her on her way down the staircase. 

“You saying you just don’t care?”

“New quartermaster, ergo new deadline for the Q-Branch budget.”

“Which Accounting didn’t consent to,” Daryl protests. 

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Eve tells him, coming to a stop. “It’s still ages before you need to file this thing.”

“The _problem_ , Miss Moneypenny,” Daryl sniffs, “is that the Committee’s gonna be ticked off enough as it is about giving the Major’s job to some kid barely out of uni, so I’m gonna have to package the budget real nicely if I don’t want them to whack me over the head with it –” 

“Or rather,” Eve translates, since she’s fluent in Daryl’s particular brand of theatrics, “it’s karaoke night on Thursday, and you’re planning on ridding all patrons of their phone numbers through the magical powers of your voice?”

Daryl stops mid-sentence. At least he has the decency to look sheepish. Eve decides to throw him a bone – the poor sod needs all the fun he can get given how much havoc Q’s presumably going to wreak on his work hours and sanity – and promises to have Q make the budget revision his first priority. 

Well, one of his first. 

“You understand my pain,” Daryl tells her solemnly, and hurries off in the direction he was going originally. 

Eve smirks after him. 

“For the sake of England I hope that expression has nothing to do with why 007 is currently tearing through paper targets as though they’re constructions of diplomatic importance.”

She feels her grin widen as she turns towards Bill Tanner. “I thought his evaluation wasn’t until next month?” 

“For some reason it’s been rescheduled.” Bill arches an eyebrow at her that is all too knowing. 

“Imagine that,” Eve coos. 

Bill’s lips twitch at the innocence colouring her tone. “I fathom I’m going to have to adjust the route I was going to take with our newest recruit,” he says matter-of-factly. “I shudder to think of what the combined forces of Q and 007 might unleash on this institution.”

 _That bastard._

“Walk with me,” Eve tells him, then explains everything exactly like he intended her to. 

Bill gives a low whistle once she’s done. “You realise this could implode rather spectacularly.” She nods. “M will have your head if it does.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” 

“All right, then.”

And just like that, Eve found an accomplice. Curiosity carries her all the way to the shooting range, tucked away in the basement near the Q-Branch testing sites. She catches James as he’s stowing away the training weapons.

The Double-oh’s expression morphs into a smirk once Eve is close enough to see. “You didn’t even break into my flat for an update, Miss Moneypenny.”

“All that would have accomplished is make you pretend you don’t kiss and tell, James,” Eve replies, “when we both know you will, unless you want your next mission to be wading through sewage to execute a kill order that’s even above our normal agents.”

“And I used to wonder why you’re single,” James teases back. 

“Speaking of which…” Eve trails off suggestively. 

James’s account of Saturday is considerably briefer than Q’s, filled to the brim with innuendos Eve matches to things Q described, yet not much actual information apart from the way the lines of James’s body loosen, somehow, when talking about Q. 

Then James scowls, lifting his right hand. There are two long, angry red lines running along the back of the palm. Eve’s guess is Linux. 

“I take it he has a cat?”

“One cat, one red devil.” James’s glare darkens. “Hated me instantly for no apparent reason. I even brought them catnip, for Christ’s sake.”

The image of James Bond ringing Q’s doorbell bearing catnip almost makes Eve choke from sheer adorableness. 

“Well, if anyone’s going to manage to win over a cat, it’s you, 007.”

“Oh, I will.”

The last time Eve saw that particular look on the man, an ambassador’s residence went up in flames. Fortunately, Linux is made of sterner stuff. 

“Does this mean you’re about to embark on a relationship?”

James purses his lips. “Bit early to label it.”

“But you’re going to see him again?”

A nod. “Soon. But he’s starting a new job this week – and I have bloody _medical_ breathing down my neck,” James huffs, then turns up the charm. “Eve –”

Only her superior self-control allows Eve to keep a straight face. “No, I’m not going to get into a row with Svetlana just because you’re annoyed you’ll have to actually work for your pay slip, Bond.”

“You have no heart.”

“Quite the contrary.” Eve checks the clock. “I’m even giving Arquette from Legal an extra two hours to finish that final revision today.”

She only doled out the task this morning, but James doesn’t need to know that. 

*

Q’s almost late on his first day – _bloody tube_ – and rushes through the doors of the glass-and-chrome monstrosity near the Thames at nine o’clock on the dot. Fortunately, Tanner’s expression is just as neutral as he remembers from the job interview. 

“Everyone’s looking forward to meet you,” the chief of staff assures him as they ride the lift up to Human Resources, where the personnel seems genuinely pleased to welcome Q into the agency. 

“And here is your ID card.” 

The department head, Miss Dziedzic, presents the small plastic rectangle. Q prepares for the worst, yet to his surprise the only thing on there is his nickname. 

“M and Mrs Pryce liked your suggestion to turn it into your handle,” Tanner informs him. 

“At least as much as Mrs Pryce likes anything that doesn’t heighten productivity,” Miss Dziedzic mutters, making Q chuckle. 

“I got the same impression,” he agrees, remembering yesterday’s curt phone call in vivid detail. 

Even the corners of Tanner’s mouth seem to have softened, but Q hasn’t known him long enough to be certain. 

“Shall we?”

The man gives Q the tour, introducing him first to Accounting, then Logistics – whom Q swears to be especially nice to considering they’re in charge of ordering tea and whatnot for the staff kitchens – and segueing to his intended workplace via Maintenance and the server rooms. 

Where Q stops dead.

“Does this agency have interns?” he wonders faintly.

Tanner’s brow creases. “Too much hassle regarding background checks. Why?”

Q is too horrified by the mess of cables and dust bunnies ( _dust bunnies, bloody hell_ ) to do more than wave a hand at the shambles, though Tanner translates the gesture expertly. 

“As far as I’m aware, Q-Branch is in charge of tidying up here. Boothroyd’s second-in-command didn’t want any more people in here than strictly necessary.”

“Of course, any blundering idiot could smuggle in malware,” Q agrees absent-mindedly as he trails his eyes along the rows of equipment. 

He’s half a second away from grabbing the necessary tools to crack open every single case in this room and chase down even the last dust particle by himself. Instead he confronts said second-in-command, a large bloke on the other side of forty with shaggy hair who probably went into IT because he liked the free beer at LAN parties. 

It doesn’t end well. 

“I heard you already made Shane cry,” is the first thing Eve says to him as they run into her on the spiral staircase. “You’ve only been here for ninety minutes.”

“Shane’s an utter moron who couldn’t code his way out of Windows Vista, and whoever thought it a good idea to hire that berk deserves a lecture on the rapid change within computing and the resulting necessity to stay up-to-date and, for the love of Alan Turing, _clean the sodding hardware_.”

Eve exchanges a look with Tanner, who managed to remain stoic throughout Q’s entire fit. 

“You’re adorable when you’re in a strop.”

“That’s not the adjective his department would use,” Tanner points out drily. “Not after that dressing-down.”

“Hopefully it’ll be a lesson for those who survive my restructuring,” Q sniffs. 

Eve’s steps falter briefly. “You gave him permission to fire people, Bill?” 

“Staffing decisions are in his purview as department head,” Tanner confirms, his tone half-amused, half-weary. 

“I’ll stock up on Lagavullin for M’s office.” 

Q would worry about overstepping, yet the appreciative crinkle of Eve’s eyes tells him he’s actually proving his worth to the agency right now. 

“What’s next?” he asks, since he has no idea where they’re heading. 

“Medical,” Tanner tells him. 

Eve’s shoulders twitch and Q wonders why that revelation comes with the need to stifle a laugh, especially since she doesn’t accompany them further than the administrative part of the department, where Tanner introduces Q to their chief medical officer. 

Dr Catharine Fakhri, a dynamic lass with a bone-crushing handshake, insists on making an appointment to review his medical history as soon as possible. 

“You have impeccable timing,” she informs him after. “You get to see one of our illustrious Double-ohs in the midst of their evaluation.”

Tanner suggests they drop by for introductions, and Q eagerly agrees. He has been intrigued by the Double-oh programme since Gareth Mallory explained its members’ unique requirements regarding equipment. Their job sounds even more interesting and mysterious than arctic baby seal hunting, though Q won’t ever mention that to James. 

The Double-oh turns out to be male and doing pull-ups with his back to them. The basic metal bar, fastened between two poles, is situated in what appears to be a cross between gym and lab. The man’s long-sleeved T-shirt has begun clinging to his skin from sweat, highlighting broad shoulders and a rather nice backside, if Q is being frank. Something odd tugs at Q’s mind, though he can’t quite put his finger on what it is…

“007,” Tanner greets, rounding the contraption, “meet your new quartermaster.”

The agent pulls himself up once more and holds the position briefly before dropping off with a grace that reminds Q of the man who spent the most delicious parts of Sunday night in his bed…

… which might be because the agent is said man. 

Q blinks twice. _What the hell?_

“You must be joking,” James states, his voice flat and eyes cold. 

Q can’t seem to make his voice work. 

Tanner clears his throat. “Have you two met previously?” 

Neither of them replies; they just stare at each other. Q sees the exact moment James connects all the dots since it is the exact same moment Q connects all the dots. 

James’s gaze snaps towards the door Q and Tanner used and he stalks right past Q with a thunderous expression. It finally frees Q from his stupor and he hurries after the man – who’s apparently a sodding Double-oh agent, _damn_ – and comes to a halt in medical’s reception area where James is glaring at a smug-looking Eve. 

Three seconds pass in terse silence. Q speaks before the tension can solidify and crush them all.

“I take it this is the meddlesome friend you mentioned in your profile?”

James’s jaw clenches. “And the best friend who knows all about your algorithms.”

When Eve’s grin widens, yet another realisation hits Q like a bucket of water. 

“You bloody well _wrote_ his profile, didn’t you?”

Eve nods. “Though I like to think of it as optimising.”

The anger radiating off James would make lesser men cower. Eve, however, is neither male nor lesser, and doesn’t bat an eye. 

“Did you have medical reschedule my evaluation as well?” 

James’s tone is scarily dark. Q belatedly realises that he probably knows at least sixty-eight ways to kill a person with his bare hands alone. Then he remembers the whole ‘license to kill’ aspect and feels his pulse stutter at the memory of James’s hands all over his body, using his brute strength to manhandle him and – _fuck_.

Q missed Eve’s reply but he can’t imagine it being anything but the affirmative. James’s expression is unreadable when he glances at Q, lips pressed together and forming a thin line, and the next thing he knows, the man – _agent_ – is walking off. The door slams shut behind him and the resulting _BANG_ finally ignites the anger that has been pooling in Q’s stomach. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” he snaps at Eve. “In what universe, no, in what _multiverse_ was any of this a good idea?” 

“In a verse in which neither of you daft morons would have agreed to a blind date,” Eve shoots back without missing a beat. “This way you could meet outside the world of global espionage and discover you’d be brilliant together.”

“James just stormed out of here like a bat out of hell.”

Q’s reminder earns him nothing but a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’ll sulk for a bit, escape on a mission or two, and then he’ll have that whole epiphany that dating you is going to be much, much easier without all the lies and deceit surrounding his occupation, and that this way he might actually get another shot at happiness.”

“Bahrain?” Tanner suddenly cuts in. 

Q starts violently. He didn’t even hear the man follow him. 

“It comes with explosions.”

Eve apparently did. 

“He’ll have to complete his evaluation before taking off, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll talk to Catharine,” Eve says, already on her way further into the department, leaving a dazzled Q and a bemused Bill Tanner in her wake. 

“Shall we return to Q-Branch, or do you need a moment?”

The most eloquent response Q manages is a nonsensical “Uh,” which somehow Tanner translates into the “Yes, please,” Q wasn’t even aware he meant to say. His mind is a tad overwhelmed with the situation, apparently. 

Tanner diverts his attention to his tablet, giving Q at least the illusion of privacy. He takes a deep breath and pushes the fury and confusion into a corner of his mind. He still has his first day as new quartermaster to survive, after all, and throwing a strop right now would probably leave the worst impression imaginable. 

So he squares his shoulders, and goes back to work. 

*

Q doesn't make it home that day, and the state of MI6 and MI5’s network security make it highly unlikely he’ll see the inside of his flat the following night as well. Q tears through the agency's systems with a fine-toothed comb, yet quickly finds he'll need a complete reboot with an OS of his own design that includes security measures that actually serve to protect the organisation. 

“… but I’ll change the employee account verification protocols today,” Q continues while Shane is taking notes. “It's like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound, but even I can’t write a completely new operating system within a day.”

“What's wrong with our passwords?” Shane blurts. “They're thirteen digits long!”

Twenty-four hours after first contact, Shane doesn't flinch as violently anymore under Q's withering glare. 

“No amount of digits is going to help you if you’re still thinking of them as words, Mr Dawson.” Q tries – and fails – to keep the venom out of his tone. “I managed to crack M’s in less than three minutes with nothing but a sodding _laptop_ ; not to mention the seconds it took me to crack yours. Bloody hell, anyone watching Last Week Tonight knows more about network security than you lot!”

“Last week when?”

“Tonight,” Q growls with so much vengeance that Shane visibly shrinks. Q rubs a hand across his face, inhaling deeply. “Note to myself: make John Oliver's interview with Ed mandatory viewing for all prospective Q-Branch employees.” 

“Ed who?” 

“Snowden,” Q barks, then goes in search of tea before he makes good on his threat of strangling Shane with a power cord. 

A couple of hours later – Q lost track of time somewhere during the night – he is typing as fast as his hands allow, surrounded by the four best screens he found in the building, while the rest of Q-Branch gives him a wide, wide berth. 

Familiar steps draw his attention away from the current line of code. 

“I’m still furious with you, Eve,” he snarls without looking up. “Get bent.”

The _clack-clack-clack_ of her heels on the panelled flooring doesn't stop until she reaches his workstation. “Your level of vulgarity is directly proportional to how low your blood sugar is, did you know that?” 

“I don't give a toss.” 

“Here. According to my sources you've been running on tea and arrogance for more than twelve hours.” 

Q tries to ignore whatever she placed at the edge of the desk to his right, but his treacherous body has other plans. The heavenly smell of quality Indian curry makes his fingers falter. 

He succumbs with a grumble. “But don't think you're forgiven, you sneaky minx.” 

Eve remains unfazed. “I fed your cats.” 

“Their feeding station is self-sufficient for up to two days.” 

“They get prissy without attention.” 

Q puts another forkful into his mouth to save himself from having to concede she has a point. Of course that makes the woman change tactics.

“Have you talked to James since yesterday?” 

“I don't see how that is any of your business, Miss Moneypenny.”

“I know you had Arthur pull the bylaws on fraternization,” Eve tuts. “As though I’d even think about setting you up before ensuring you could stay together.”

Q huffs in annoyance. She’s like a dog with a bone and Q really needs to get back to coding, so maybe he should fill her in. Besides, in the scope of things, it’s not like he’ll be able to stay mad at her for too long. Which doesn’t mean he won’t try to for as long as possible. 

So he explains, “Well, ShakenNotStirred deleted his account and changed his number,” ignoring the way one of Eve’s eyebrows twitches, as if to point out he’s pathetic for using his resources to check up on James’s movements. “I could easily find out his new one, but I fathom that would not be appreciated.”

“You fathom correctly.” Eve puts a hand on his shoulder he shrugs off immediately. 

“You’re still not forgiven. You manipulated me.”

For the first time he sees something like remorse flicker over Eve’s face. The contrite expression is gone moments later and replaced with a lofty grin. 

“You’ll thank me on your anniversary dinner.” 

“To which you won’t be invited.”

It was the wrong reply. Eve pounces like a hound on its prey. 

“So you do have plans to win him back?” 

An angry rumble is Q’s response, though judging by Eve’s chuckle it probably makes him sound more like a hapless kitten than the dangerous predator he was aiming for. 

He doesn’t deny her statement. 

*

In an attempt to ‘teach him the ropes’, Mayor Boothroyd leaves outfitting 007 for the mission in Bahrain to Q, who checks the clock only to find he has less than twelve hours to figure out how to communicate his continuous romantic interest in the agent by means of weaponry. 

James’s flight is scheduled for seven o’clock Friday morning. He saunters into Q-Branch an hour before that, relaxed and cocky and gosh, wearing the hell out of a navy blue three-piece that makes Q’s throat dry. 

“007,” he greets the man. At least his voice still works. 

“Q.” 

There is a twinkle in James’s eyes. The humour of his nickname becoming his handle hasn’t escaped him, apparently. 

By some miracle, Q doesn’t fumble with the envelope that has been sitting on his second desk since midnight.

“Documentation and passport. Plane ticket and case files have been uploaded to your phone.” Q hands over the device with a steady hand. “Once I get settled in and complete the OS, the mobile software’s going to change as well, yet for this mission everything operates like you’re used to.”

The corner of James’s mouth twitches. Nice to know Q’s nervous prattling amuses him. 

He retrieves the small, black case with as little flourish as he can muster – which is hard since he was up all night working on the daft thing, and it’s a genius feat of engineering and programming, and there’s no way James is going to appreciate it with how things are between them. 

“Walther PPKS nine millimetre short,” Q explains once James has opened the box. “There’s a micro-dermal sensor in the grip. Encoded to your palm print so only you can fire it.” Q pauses for effect. “Less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement.”

If James is impressed, he doesn’t show it. “And this?”

“Standard issue radio transmitter. Activate it and it broadcasts your location. Distress signal.” 

Q holds it out. He could have easily placed it inside the box, but then he wouldn’t have been able to hand over a small object and wouldn’t have come this close – _this bloody close, damn it_ – to brushing his fingers against James’s. 

Who seems fairly underwhelmed, the dolt. “A gun, and a radio. Not exactly Christmas, is it?”

Q scowls a little. “Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that anymore.”

The petulant tone is another thing that Double-ohs apparently find amusing. James meets his eyes with a smirk. “Pity.”

Then he turns to leave. Q can’t quite keep from tracing his eyes down James’s back and thinking of what the bespoke fabric is hiding as the man exits the main room of Q-Branch, at least until a stifled giggle alerts him to the fact that the room is not, in fact, empty despite the early hour. 

“Stop dawdling,” he barks, and his colleagues scuttle in a satisfying hurry. 

*

007 loses the gun in Bahrain. 

To be fair, he also leaves two pints of blood on the beach of Muharraq, but his blood isn’t a top-secret prototype, as Q makes sure to point out to the agent when he strolls casually into Q-Branch to return the radio. His skin is paler than Q remembers, but if medical didn’t forcibly restrain him or cuff him to the bed, he’s probably in perfect condition to be reprimanded. 

“I believe I handed you a phone as well, 007.”

“You did. It was eaten by an Arabian oryx.” 

James doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. 

“You seem to be operating under the impression that I find your careless treatment of my equipment charming,” Q says. 

His calm tone has the first people around him slink off into the non-existent shadows of the department’s main room. 

“Not at all, quartermaster.”

And how does James manage to make his new job title sound _dirty_?

“So why didn’t you retrieve the phone after this oh-so-believable act of animalistic vandalism?”

James snorts, then narrows his eyes at Q, almost as if he thought the suggestion to be a joke. 

“I’m perfectly serious, 007. I have read some of the reports from your past missions – you would have had no trouble eviscerating a modest-sized mammal.” 

“Presumably. I was also being followed by men with guns, so pardon my hurry.”

Now it’s Q’s turn to snort. “Do both of us a favour and don’t pretend like you’re rubbish at handling both a tail of such proportions and an animal at the same time.”

He notes the shift in James’s posture and mentally applauds himself. He vouched to establish firm rules for his new role as quartermaster, and one of them includes not allowing Double-ohs to get away with frivolous handling of expensive government technology. Needless to say, both M and Pryce approve wholeheartedly. Accounting might even be a tad in love with him right now (although that might just be Wenham’s flirtatious attitude). 

“Well, 007?” he prompts and watches the corners of James’s blue eyes crinkle. 

“Oh, and rob you of the _satisfaction_ of figuring it out for yourself?” James smirks. “You’re a clever boy. You’ll manage.”

The agent swans off without another word. 

Q only successfully holds off rising to the bait because 003’s situation in Alaska escalates and he has to alter INTERPOL’s records within mere minutes to collaborate the stories that quick-witted woman is sprouting at her kidnappers. 

It is also his swift and effective handling of the situation that has Major Boothroyd declare him trained and hand over the figurative keys to the department. 

“Miss Moneypenny –”

“I’ve pencilled you in for an in-depth discussion of Q-Branch’s restructuring with M, Mrs Pryce, and the head of Human Resources first thing tomorrow.”

“Uh, that’s,” Q stammers as Eve grins at him. “Good.”

“She is prone to such foresight,” Boothroyd tells him sagely. “England would fall without her.”

“You’re the Mrs Hudson of national security,” Q deadpans before he can bite his tongue, which has Eve laugh and the Major look confused. 

_James would have understood the reference_ , his mind supplies, unbidden. 

The thought reminds him of phone-eating oryxes – _oryx?_ – and the next time he allows himself some reprieve he finds himself looking up more on the mammal (and its grammatical properties because he takes pride in his nerd status). 

“Am I to believe,” Q drawls the next time 007 appears in Q-Branch, which happens to be the day he has every no-good programmer under his care (read: most of them) clean every single hardware component ever to have been installed within the CNS tower, “that you opted against eviscerating an animal because its species is endangered in Bahrain?”

“I’m an anonymous Greenpeace benefactor,” James says without a moment’s pause. 

“I knew setting that Tyson meat packaging facility on fire in Nebraska in 2007 was a conscious decision on your part,” Q replies drily.

James slides one hand into the pockets of his expensive trousers. “You caught me.”

Q exhales through his nose and grits his teeth, then proceeds with the briefing 007 came in for. 

“This time,” he adds, handing over a new Walther, “stay out of the way of endangered species.”

“No promises. Sumatra is terribly small.”

Q wonders how Boothroyd coped with these impulses to cause a Double-oh bodily harm. 

“Take it as a personal challenge then to evade any and all tigers on that island.”

“There are four hundred of them. Might be difficult.”

“I’m certain you’re going to give it your best shot, 007,” Q says, making sure to let his mounting irritation seep into his voice, “or all you get for your next mission is a dull spoon.”

The man’s smirk doesn’t falter. “Why a dull one?” 

“Because I don’t have the time to invent a spoon-sharpening machine, 007. Now get the hell out of my department.”

“You should sleep more, Q,” James tells him. “Those shadows are unbecoming for a kid your age.”

“My complexion is hardly relevant.” 

“Your competence is.”

Q indulges his urge and rolls his eyes. “I assure you, I’ve performed more dangerous tasks operating on much less sleep.” 

Forty-eight hours later, none of which Q spent resting on the grounds of not one, not two, but _five_ unclaimed flash drives found in one of the backup server rooms, he begins to regret his brashness. 

Apparently hoping James Bond would err on the side of caution or even simply leave a chance for explosions unseized is too bloody much. Cue to Q having to hack his way into the software of his enemies’ cars – bless Audi Connect – and highjack a drone or two the Americans surely won’t be missing for the next few hours. 

At the end of the day their mark is alive, albeit a bit charred, and Eve is cackling at what she calls James and his “incessant flirting” over the comms. 

“We’re not flirting,” Q protests. 

“Defensive,” Eve points out. 

“It’s called honesty.”

“It’s called rekindling the flame.”

“That makes us sound like two geriatric sods who’ve been together so long they’ve begun taking each other for granted.”

Eve blinks. “You have quite a fluffy imagination.” 

“I will swap your water for hydraulic fluid if you don’t shut up.”

“Accounting’s going to decapitate you if you waste even one drop of that custom mixture.”

“And then how would you live with yourself, Miss Moneypenny?”

Eve laughs. “Get some sleep, Q.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon.” 

His best friend sighs. “You haven’t left for longer than six hours at a stretch since you started working here.”

“Dziedzic wants me to finalise whom I’m kicking to the kerb by,” Q checks the clock, “oh, in two hours. Then I’ll get to start looking for minions.” 

“Don’t let Pryce hear you call them that.”

“Please,” Q scoffs, “I have some higher brain function left.”

“Of which James will divest you upon his return.”

“Kindly remove yourself from my department, Miss Moneypenny.”

“I adore you too, Q.”

*

Eve might have had a point. They’re definitely flirting. 

“Is there a reason you haven’t donned any clothes?” 

“Am I distracting you from your typing, Q?” 

He doesn’t need yet another glance at the screen showing the hotel room’s surveillance feed to tell James is smiling that smug smile of his that has Q torn between wanting to wipe it off or kiss it off. 

“Only an ignorant dolt like you would refer to the delicate ministrations I’m currently undertaking as _typing_ , 007.”

In his second month at the agency, with the recruitment process gaining momentum in the background, Q decides Bill Tanner is complicit in whatever scheme Eve has devised to add a personal component to James and Q’s professional relationship. Tanner simply _has to be_ in on it, or else he wouldn’t assign James to the Caribbean where shirts are optional and the marks are beautiful women Q can’t even be jealous of since they mean nothing to the operative.

And well, Q might not be the prude Shane accused him of being (right before hoisting up a cardboard box holding all his personal items and leaving the building forever, to Q’s delight). 

“Were the sprinklers really necessary? I had eyes on a fire extinguisher.”

“Double-ohs who cause unnecessary fires do not get a vote in how their quartermaster puts them out.”

“And the fact that I lost my jacket and tie to goon number seventeen had nothing to do with it, I reckon?”

James doesn’t mention the fact that this leaves him only in a white, tailored shirt he somehow successfully kept clear of blood splatter during the preceding carnage, which is currently falling prey to said sprinklers.

“You reckon correctly, 007.” 

Q saves a few seconds of the footage to his private folder and wonders if setting a gif of it as his laptop background is worth the risk of discovery. 

*

Before his third month at the Centre for National Security is over, Mission Woo 007 With Explosive Gear I Can Write Off As Vital Equipment For The Greater Good (obviously a working title) is reaping first benefits: a lingering smile during James’s debrief, a returned gun, 007 saving a war lord’s heavily encrypted laptop and bringing it back to London… Too bad Q is still looking for a loophole that allows him to build an exploding pen. 

“Why would you even want an exploding pen, sir?” Nandi’s frown deepens. “It sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

“I heard it’s some sorta courting ritual for 007,” Jasper explains, drawing an annoyed rumble from Q. Jasper winces. “Sorry, boss. More tea?”

“You can save a resounding ‘yes’ as default reply to such inane questions,” Q tells him, waving him off and turning back to Nandi, his new second-in-command, for whatever documents she needs him to review. 

Somewhere between writing a custom operating system for the CNS, thinking of gadgets James might appreciate, steadfastly ignoring his online dating endeavours, and the general madness that is his department, Q found time to refill its decimated ranks. 

He found Nandi through a link his sister forwarded, which brought him to a marvellously coded website for a support network for trans people of colour. Jasper, a formerly bored sixteen-year-old struggling with six-form turned highly motivated sixteen-year-old working on his GCSE, is keeping up his white hat vigilante-ing online and making Q misty-eyed from the beauty that are Jasper’s permutating algorithms. Then there is Charlotte, aka Charlie, a mechanic who fixes black market medical equipment and hacker tech. Meanwhile Leung graduated top of his biochemical engineering class in Birmingham and has been seriously subchallenged at his current, corporate job. 

“Have you calculated the mean age of your department recently?” Eve wonders as the latest addition sets up her desk.

“Marcus and Dan alleviate it enough for all of us.”

Eve purses her lips. “Only because you couldn’t fire them as well.”

“Believe it or not,” Q says, “that was never an option.”

Granted, Marcus and Dan make annoying jokes, play awful music at top volume in their workshop, looked to the windows when Valerie mentioned setting up a “cloud”, and enjoy winding Q up on grounds of his age and lack of firearm training. Too bad they’re the best weapons technicians in the country, and a package deal. 

They are also the ones to alert Q to a terrifying development. 

“You started a betting pool.”

Q knows how he must look – hair in disarray from another night spent programming, arms folded in front of his heaving chest after sprinting up the spiral into M’s antechamber – but he doesn’t give a toss. 

“It’s but one of many,” Eve replies loftily. She doesn’t even look away from her computer screen. “You should be thrilled – it means you’re a part of the family.” 

“You lot made a habit out of gambling on employees’ love life?”

“It upholds morale.”

Q seethes silently. 

Eve hits enter, then swirls in her chair to face him. “You’ll love it once you get the hang of it. You want to know your odds?”

“No,” he insists. 

Eve tells him anyway. As it turns out, Q’s colleagues are less optimistic about 007 coming to his senses and returning to him than Q himself. 

“They don’t know the whole story,” Eve tries to mollify him, patting his arm as Q hangs his head. 

Of course that’s when the door to M’s office opens and the man himself steps out, so Q spends three minutes assuring him that no, 009 is still in pursuit, and no, 002 has not been discovered by the Somalian pirates, and yes, 007 has yet to check in about that spot of bother in Azerbaijan. 

Eve’s shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter, which becomes real laughter as soon as M is out of the room. 

“You really shouldn’t reduce complex socio-political hot spots with potentially detrimental effects on the world’s economy to ‘that spot of bother in Azerbaijan’, Q.”

Q waves a dismissive hand and remembers he’s still cross with her about the betting pool. 

Eighteen hours later, he wonders if he jinxed it. 

“Obviously,” James drawls over the comms. How that man manages to sound so collected against the backdrop of a bullet hail shall baffle Q forever. “Total S.A. decided to cover up the discovery of another oil well because a programmer who doesn’t even know what they are ‘jinxed it’.”

“They’re a French energy giant,” Q bites out, “and take the next left – five targets.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

On the low-res surveillance feed (and really, couldn’t corrupt business people at least spring for HD security cameras?), James reaches for something in his bag. 

“I swear to Turing, 007,” Q barks, “if you detonate even a low-intensity grenade within the walls of an _oil refinery_ I’ll remove your testicles and feed them to my cats.”

“With a dull spoon?” 

“The dullest spoon in London,” Q promises. 

James doesn’t detonate a grenade. As it turns out, he reached for one of Leung’s contraptions, which fills the hallway with a cloud of smoke that incapacitates the five marks Q mentioned. 

However, James does activate his exploding watch and damage the refinery’s systems in a way that would have led to the largest explosion to ever make it onto the agent’s record if Q weren’t the genius he is. He is rarely grateful for Western cultural imperialism, but when most documents at the refinery are written in Persian or Cyrillic alphabet, he’s more than relieved for binary’s Latin script. 

He is feeling less charitable with his operative. 

“She’d have shot me,” James has the gall to argue on his way out the still-standing facility. 

“Which you could have prevented with, oh, I don’t know, any of the _seven other brilliant gadgets_ I gave you, but _no_ , you had to chose the flashiest one and force me to pull off the most dangerous feat of hacking I’ve never even contemplated!”

“We grow with our challenges,” is the man’s reply, and Q punishes him by postponing his extraction for an hour in parching heat. 

* 

Eve finds him at the bottom of a whiskey glass. 

It’s not even a nice one; no cut-crystal, no handmade work of art. Just a cheap tumbler one can find in any thrift shop for a penny or two, which is probably where the owner of the pub picked them out long ago. 

James might look at home in his bespoke suits and lush hotels, yet it’s at times like this that his mind betrays him. Eve has never seen him brood or grieve in a Michelin-star establishment; he always selects the shabbiest watering holes in his vicinity. At least this place seems to be a step up from what he told Eve about that bar in the Caribbean. 

“No scorpions this time?” is what she chooses to open with, sliding onto the stool next to James. 

The barman shoots her an expected, quizzical glance, given how her immaculate appearance blatantly clashes with the décor. James fits in much better, just back from his mission in Azerbaijan that left him rumpled and unshaven, leather jacket draped over the stool to his right. 

James made her the second she entered the pub. He doesn’t even turn his head when he remarks, “Those are a little hard to come by in Central London.” 

“If anyone could find one, it’s you.”

James gives a half-shrug, accompanied by a grunt. He signals the barman, who manoeuvres his large form over to them and hands them another glass, then the bottle when James requests it. He pours Eve a generous amount and she winces her way through the first sip of ghastly liquor, if only to make James’s lips curl for a moment. 

“Well?” James prompts, refilling his glass. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Contrary to what your comportment occasionally suggests, James, especially when there are firearms involved,” Eve says, “your life is not a film. And definitely not one in which the undervalued sidekick imparts vital lessons on you that make you see the error of your ways.” 

“Sidekick?” James’s eyes narrow. “I’d have cast you as the villain.”

“Oh yes, the evil best friend who wants the idiots around her to be happy together.” Eve smirks. “I see you found a niche. Better call the BBC.”

James downs another shot. 

“Riddle me this, then,” Eve continues, changing tactics. “If you’re so cross I manipulated both of you, why have you been flirting with him for weeks? Why not simply cut your losses, give him the cold shoulder?”

No reply. Eve didn’t expect one. 

“You like him, I know you do. And I think you like him even more now that you’ve seen how brilliant he is at his job, so much so that you can’t refrain from all that verbal foreplay. Why not take the next logical step? You know, before Q does something daft, like trying to fit razor blades into a briefcase in an attempt to woo you.”

James swirls the liquid inside the tumbler, raised halfway to his lips. “Jolly good, another way to kill.”

His tone was clearly intended to be flippant, yet the result is far from it, raspy and resigned. Suddenly, the missing piece of the puzzle that has been 007’s strange behaviour materialises inside Eve’s head. 

“Is that what this is about? Oh, darling.”

She reaches out but James gives the barest hint of twitch, so she retracts her hands. 

“He sees more in you than the Double-oh with a license to kill who likes riling him up and destroy his inventions, James.” 

“Then he’s delusional.”

Eve feels her nostrils flare. James tends to forget she knows him better than anyone left alive. True, that’s mostly due to how she scraped him off the floor of a pub night after night after the former M’s death, but it doesn’t change the fact that she is perfectly aware it’s James who is deluding himself. 

Time to put an end to him wallowing in his man pain. 

She grabs the bottle, and it speaks volumes about her friend’s state of inebriation that she succeeds. 

“You listen to me, mister,” she says, her tone brooking no argument. “If you’re not ready to show up at Q’s door and ask him out, that’s fine. But at least give him a bloody chance to realise on his own what’s holding you back, because I promise you he won’t accept you making decisions for him on what he does and doesn’t want in a partner. Let him see you, all of you. It’s scary, I get that, James, but you’re the strongest man I know. Act like it.”

Eve inhales sharply, trying to get her breathing under control again. How come Double-ohs are always such emotionally stunted morons? 

“Settle your tab,” she orders, then slides off her stool and leans across the counter to put as much distance between them and the bottle as she can. 

Under her watchful eye, James tosses a few notes onto the bar and slips into his jacket. The sight fills Eve with an odd sense of déjà vu, though at least tonight James manages to hold himself upright. She still helps him into his flat, just to be safe. 

When he brings her a heavenly caramel latte from her favourite coffee shop the next day, Eve knows she has gotten through to him. 

* 

In the world of James Bond, as Q soon discovered, appointments seem to be mere suggestions rather than fixed things that mortal human beings need to adhere to. Meaning that it doesn't come as a surprise when 007 materialises within Q-Branch even though he is supposed to be in medical for his post-mission check-up. 

The fact that Q knows James’s schedule used to embarrass him a lot more than it does now. 

“And yet you wonder why Dr Fakhri hasn’t taken a shine to you, 007.”

James cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, I'm perfectly aware of the reasons she keeps me strapped to the bed.” 

Q is infinitely glad he stopped taking a drink from his tea whenever James is around, or the way his breath hitches would have had quite the blush-worthy consequences. This way he is able to cover it well, pretending his mind isn't filled with rather explicit images featuring the man and restraints. 

“What can Q-Branch do for you, 007?” he asks once he trusts his voice again. 

“It's more what Q can do for James.” 

Q does a double take, since he thinks his eyes are fooling him into thinking James’s smile has a nervous air to it. Which might be that his reaction is a derisive, “Third person? Really?” rather than something more empathetic. 

James is about to add another one of his utterly smooth comebacks to the never-ending one-liner collection one of Q’s minions has started recently, but the blaring of the tactical alert siren cuts him off. 

The man’s eyebrows rise towards his hairline, yet Q has no time to explain why his department’s alarm sounds like the Reed Alert from Start Trek Enterprise (or a moment to relish in the fact that James obviously recognises the sound, judging by his amused expression) since this particular siren is reserved for imminent threats to international security. 

Ten minutes later, Q hands over another set of weapons. 

“One of the junior agents will take you to the airport,” he tells 007, who has long since straightened and schooled his features. “We’ll call you as soon as we have details for you.”

James nods once, then turns on the soles of his shoes. Q’s attention is on his tablet a moment later, yet some part of him always seems to keep tabs on the man, which is why he notices James’s steps slow down upon reaching the door. 

He doesn’t stop, however. Q wishes he had, if only to satisfy his selfish curiosity.

*

Resolving the threat takes 007 an entire week and provides a lead into global, black market gun trade, so his mission segues into what should have been a standard recon mission. 

Unfortunately the Gods of Espionage have other plans: it all goes tits up in the blink of an eye and requires the agent to make use of his license to kill in the most gruesome ways possible. 

Q is glad he skipped lunch as he watches over the official handler’s shoulder how James literally breaks another human’s skull and chokes the life out of another. 

“Well, that was subtle,” 007 quips via the comm channel, but his rigid posture belies any and all ease of his statement. 

Patty, the handler, seems to be frozen, so Q picks up a second headset. 

“Your definition of ‘subtle’ and mine seem to be diametrically opposed,” is the only thing he can think of. Q intended his remark to lighten the mood despite the toe-curling levels of violence, yet it has the opposite effect and James’s muscles visibly contract. 

Instead of the usual banter that follows the conclusion of a mission, James’s demeanour continues to be distant, closed-off, positively _cold_ , signing off with the kind of brusque tone usually reserved for handlers not Q. It leaves Q bewildered, squinting at his computer.

It is only hours later, by the dim light of the single screen still switched on in his department, that Q has an epiphany as to why. 

He noticed the signs before – he saw, but he didn’t listen, did he; didn’t realise that the last thing James wanted was for a potentially serious romantic partner to witness the carnage and destruction he is capable of. So even after James overcame his ire about Eve’s hand in their meeting, James didn’t pursue Q, who has been in a position to see all sides of him, not just the charming, suit-wearing man of mystery image James cultivates most of the time. 

“I’ve been a bloody idiot,” Q decides. 

His branch is empty, yet even if it weren’t he doubts anyone would argue the point. 

He barely remembers to power down his workstation in his rush to get out of the room and down to the workshop where he locked away the exploding pen he built during a boring conference call a few weeks ago. He checks his reflection in the cab’s window on his way to Pimlico and only stops for breath when he’s outside James’s door. 

The man landed two hours ago; debrief is scheduled for tomorrow morning. He’s probably asleep by now, _and really, this all has been a terrible idea, what the heck was I even thinking –_

“Q?”

He whirls around. James is standing in his doorway, looking an utter mess even in cotton trousers and a beige henley. There is a cut right above the man’s right eyebrow, his left eye is swollen slightly, and there are bruises forming on his forearms, partially hidden by the fabric of his top. 

“Uh, James.” 

_Gosh, my middle name should be ‘eloquence’._

“Not 007?” James wonders, though Q’s shake of the head has him tense up impossibly further. 

“Well, my present might assist you during your job as well, but first and foremost it’s a private thing – wouldn’t want the expense to show up on public records, we’d be the laughing stock of the entire Kingdom for a month and –”

Q stops, since James has retreated into his flat. He left the door open, and Q follows him inside, grateful for the gesture. 

The other man doesn’t seem to be going to speak in the near future, so Q continues to ramble, producing the small box housing the exploding pen. 

“… and there’s a manual, but who am I kidding, you never read manuals, and besides, I designed it so its handling is intuitive and, uh, here.”

Q hands it over and observes with mounting trepidation as James removes the pen from its case. The pen itself is silver – sleek, expensive-looking, though unobtrusive in the scheme of things. 

“You made me an exploding pen,” James states. It’s the first time Q heard him sound baffled and he’d treasure this moment if he weren’t so bloody nervous. 

“Well, as far as grand, romantic gestures go, it’s not ideal, but I didn’t have time to restore that Ashton Martin I pretend not to have noticed you own – ”

“Romantic gestures?”

Q flaps his hands awkwardly, then clasps them together to stop himself from making an even bigger fool of himself by means of uncoordinated flailing. 

“Isn’t that what you do? I’m no expert, but I’m sure the internet would support my hypothesis.”

“Well, as long as internet approves.”

The drawl was mostly reflex, uttered absent-mindedly, Q thinks, since James is still regarding him with suspicion. Maybe Q needs to spell it out. He takes a deep breath and regrets that he didn’t practice a speech beforehand. 

“I mean we’ve been dancing around each other for weeks, and I finally realised waiting for you to come to me was going to take longer than I have the patience for. So I came here, silly trinket and all, to,” Q flounders a bit, and if anyone’s still wondering why he prefers talking to computers all day will have their final explanation, “to tell you that I’m still interested. Even more so, now that I know that arctic baby seal hunting is actually code for annoying your quartermaster and blowing stuff up in exotic locations for the good of Britain.” 

He runs out of steam after that. He waits. James is squinting at him, yet apart from that his posture is annoyingly neutral. 

“You saw what I did today,” is what James choses to say when he finally speaks. 

“Yes, you applied your extensive training to a suboptimal situation and ensured your survival.”

“I’m a killer, Q.” James’s tone is resigned. “Everything I touch dies. It’s only a matter of time.”

Q blinks. “You actually believe that, don’t you?” 

“Tell me this,” the man continues. “What would the outcome of that algorithm of yours have been if it’d known about my profession?”

“You’re more than your job, James.”

His claim draws a derisive snort from the man. Q runs a hand through his hair, rummaging for anything else he could say to make James give them another chance, but the man seems so bloody certain that – 

“Is that a tiger?” Q blurts. 

James turns, fast as a bullet, and moves to stop Q but he has already reached the coffee table where, indeed, a stuffed tiger is sitting. It’s small and fluffy in Q’s hand. 

“It’s a Somalian tiger,” Q realises. “Did you buy this for me?”

James remains silent, but there is something in his eyes that gives Q hope. 

“You did, didn’t you? And you never gave it to me because you thought I wouldn’t want anything to do with you, never mind that I spend nights coming up with clever tech to impress you, or volunteered for handling missions even though it’s not necessarily in my job description, or that we simply couldn’t bloody well stop flirting over official comm lines, but no,” Q goes on. He’s on a roll and jabbing James’s chest with the stuffed animal he’s still holding. “You reckoned I’d be appalled and would reject you if you ever bloody did anything, you absolute berk, and –”

Yet whatever else Q wanted to say will never be heard, since James finally comes to his senses and puts an end to his nervous griping with a kiss. 

The agitation leaves Q with a sigh even as he’s wrapping his arms around James’s broad shoulders to make sure the idiot remains exactly where he is and doesn’t change his mind. The kiss is rough and a touch desperate, but after a few heady moments it slows, turns more languid, allows Q to make clear without words just how much he wants this. 

He moves to cup James’s face gently, but he completely forgot he’s still holding a stuffed tiger in his right hand. Its fur tickles both their cheeks and some strands get tangled up in their kiss for a second before they part, laughing against each other’s lips. 

Q opens his eyes to find James looking back at him in wonder, like Q is something marvellous that defies all logic. 

“Here’s what I propose we do,” Q whispers, feeling James’s hands trace intricate patterns into his shoulder blades. “You’re going to lend me some sleep clothes. Then we’re going to relocate to your bedroom and keep snogging until we fall asleep, because you’re bruised and I’ve been awake for thirty-five hours, and I’m prone to injury when I’m tired.” 

He pauses. 

“Go on,” James murmurs as he brings up his other hand to push a lock of hair out of Q’s forehead. The intimacy of the gesture makes something warm unfurl in Q’s chest.

“Tomorrow you’re going to cook me breakfast and I’ll make sure you aren’t late to your debrief –” that prompts a frown that Q quickly kisses off his lips – “and tomorrow evening I’ll allow you to whisk me away for a date.”

“Are you sure I’ll be able to pry you away from your keyboard long enough?”

“Lesser people have tried and failed,” Q concedes, then smirks at James, “but something tells me you’re special.”

James’s responding smile is blinding in its sincerity. 

“On condition,” the man adds after stealing another dizzying kiss. “We don’t ever thank Eve.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Q vows, his tone desert-dry. 

A moment later they’re both laughing, and Q can still feel the vibrations of the last bouts underneath his fingers as he nudges James into the direction of the bedroom.

The tiger ends up sleeping on Q’s pillow, but he doesn’t mind. James’s chest makes for a much better one. 

*

**_EPILOGUE – One month later_ **

What Eve loves most about Q’s new operating system, if she were pressed to choose only one feature, is the encrypted private messaging function only a select few people have access to. 

It allows Q and her to keep up a steady stream of conversation throughout the day, providing her friend with an opportunity to vent his frustration and Eve with an endless supply of first-hand intel on missions she would not have been privy to otherwise. 

**Q:** Why is 007’s answer to any problem always pyrotechnics?  
**Eve:** Because you’re adorable when you’re in a strop and I’m Sorry I Blew Up That Building sex is so great?  
**Q:** … Huh.  
**Eve:** :D  
**Q:** I swear I’m one emoticon away from writing a programme to prohibit such key combinations.  
**Eve:** And miss out on dinner with James and your family? You’d never :P

Q doesn’t respond, so he’s probably sulking. Eve knows he has nothing to worry about – James charmed the knickers off Q’s sister when Q took him to the restaurant during one of her shifts; Q’s parents are likely to follow suit. 

**Eve:** Bill hasn’t stormed past me, so I take it Mexico City isn’t in ruins?  
**Q:** I threatened to withhold sex. He opted against explosions. And helicopter rides.  
**Eve:** I hope that wasn’t how you phrased it over the comms. We monitor those, you know.  
**Q:** *insert-eye-roll-here* What do you take me for?  
**Eve:** A tea-addicted genius with an army of minions who is one kidnapped Double-oh away from going rogue and seizing control?  
**Q:** …  
**Eve:** At times like this, I wish you’d rethink your aversion towards emojis.  
**Q:** Over my dead, cold corpse.  
**Eve:** You’re no fun.  
**Q:** I resent that. I agreed to let you borrow my algorithm, didn’t I? How’s that going, by the way?  
**Eve:** Still working on the seventy-two data points.  
**Q:** During office hours?  
**Eve:** Some of us are actually ahead of schedule, fancy that.  
**Q:** Bite me. 

With a soft chuckle, Eve shifts her attention back to the programme Q forwarded that morning. Honestly speaking, it warms her heart a little that he agreed to let her beta-test his online dating software. It is only stage one of her plan to have Q patent it; future stages involve her praising his programming in a way that’s both flattering and subtle and will ensure he’ll allow her to file the patent for him, sharing some of the revenue with her for her troubles. 

M’s voice pulls her from her musings. “Miss Moneypenny?”

“Yes, sir?”

Her boss looks weary, which in itself is only peculiar since there is currently no reason whatsoever for that expression to have manifested on the man’s features. 

“Any word from Bond?”

 _Ah, so he’s pre-emptively weary,_ Eve realises. “No, sir. No unplanned carnage so far, knock on wood.”

M isn’t appeased, though. “Small-scale explosions?”

“None, sir.”

“Any ill-advised seductions?”

“None of those either, sir.”

M’s eyes narrow. “He didn’t start a brawl with anyone who could bollocks this up, did he?” 

“I promise, sir, everything’s fine on his end.”

It speaks volumes of how much James Bond mucking about on a mission equalled a law of nature before Q came along that M still remains unconvinced. His question of “How?” is more a flat statement than an enquiry. 

“I’m not sure why you think I’m privy to such information, sir,” Eve says with an air of innocence. 

Mallory cocks a single eyebrow. His lips stay pressed together, so Eve knows there is no time for flippancy. 

“There might have been a recent development in 007’s personal life that is somewhat, erm, affecting his professional life,” Eve concedes. 

M mulls this over for a moment. “Does this have anything to do with Bond’s recent restraint when it comes to damaging equipment?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“And the decreasing number of times medical is nagging me about Bond’s non-compliance?”

“I couldn’t say for certain.”

“What about the burnt-out Ashton Martin Q’s been tinkering with in his limited free time?”

Eve hesitates. She had no idea M is aware that Q has been trying to restore the car James blew up in Skyfall to its former glory. 

“Or the genuinely alarming amount of time 007 appears to be spending in Q-Branch lately?”

Eve feels her lips twitch. This is why she believes M used to be a spy, too – no ordinary RAF operative should be this observant. 

Her reaction apparently gave M all the confirmation he needed. He rubs the bridge of his nose as he sighs. 

“What did you do, Miss Moneypenny.”

“What you requested, sir.” Her smile has M blink. “I believe your exact words were ‘regular dalliances of a romantic persuasion’, though I could be mistaken.”

She isn’t, of course. M is still staring at her. Then his features even out, which could mean anything from ‘what a splendid development’ to ‘what did I ever do to deserve this’. 

“Sir?” Eve prompts. 

She did not expect Mallory to give her a smile. “You’re not actually a goddess, are you?”

It startles a laugh out of her. “Not that I’m aware, sir. I simply exploited an algorithm.”

“There’s an algorithm for love?”

Eve shakes her head. “But don’t tell Q.”

Mallory hesitates for another second, brow creasing in faint curiosity, though eventually seems to conclude he really doesn’t want to know. 

Probably for the best, Eve reasons, and returns to the seventy-two data points. There might not be a universal algorithm for happiness, but this way she can write her own, and see what happens. 

[The End]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually completed a rom-com, hooray! I’m going to add the boys’ online dating profiles as chapter 4, because those were a lot of fun to write. 
> 
> Anyway, a big thanks to everyone who kept me motivated by commenting, giving kudos, subscribing and bookmarking! I hope you enjoyed this final instalment as much as I did =)


	4. Bonus Features: Dating Site Profiles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had such a blast writing these and didn’t want to keep them from you all! Here they are, the boys’ dating site profiles. Q is VirusInTheData; James is ShakenNotStirred. Mind you, Eve wrote his profile…

**VirusInTheData**

29 | male | London, England, UK | Seeking: men 25-39 

I'm the computer genius straddling the line between harmless kitten and evil overlord your friends warned you about.

** Short description:  **

A programmer who also builds stuff, drinks too much tea, and sleeps with his tablet in a completely platonic way. You don't want my help in the kitchen, but I have many other talents to make up for it. 

 

** Basic Information: **

Age:            29

Height:        5' 9" (1,75 m)

Hair:            brown and untameable

Eyes:           green

Body type:   lithe, slim

Ethnicity:     White / Caucasian

Occupation: writing code and engineering things

Education:   doctorates in Computer Sciences and Engineering

Languages:  English, Spanish, Klingon

Faith:           Culturally Atheist

Has Kids:     no

Wants Kids: currently no

Drinks:        sometimes

Smokes:      used to

 

** In my own words: **

**What I am looking for in a partner:** Someone who understands that my job is my calling but who makes me want to leave my comfort zone regardless. Someone my cats approve off (remind me to tell you about the bloke who almost lost his genitals). Someone I can talk to for hours just as much as sit with in silence.

 **The one thing I’m most passionate about:** not using any programmes I haven’t personally upgraded

 **Other than appearance, the first thing that people notice about me…** is that I talk quite fast when I get started. I guess you’ll have to come up with creative ways to stop me… *winks*

**Four things my friends say about me:**

  * “Talk to him before his first cup of Earl Grey at your own risk.”
  * “He thinks sarcasm is the highest form of wit…”
  * “Will turn into personal tech support in exchange for food or tea.” [highly dependent on the food or tea brand]



**Deal breakers:**

  * Technological illiteracy
  * Dislike of or indifference to cats
  * Operating under the delusion that Picard trumps Kirk or that Han didn't shoot first (or reading this and wondering what the heck I'm talking about)



**My ideal date:** Provided there’s wifi, I’m open to many things.

**Three things to bring to an island:**

  * a boat
  * someone to navigate said boat
  * my laptop, since frankly I’d rather suffer melanoma than days on sea without technology



**What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?** I’m more than a computer genius.

 **I hate it when people…** compare me to Steve Jobs. He was neither a programmer nor an engineer, and the ‘genius’ title is completely unwarranted. 

 **I usually spend my leisure time…** coding, tinkering, playing with Linux and Turing, binge watching items from my watch list, indulging my meddling best friend.

**Five things I can’t live without:**

  * WIFI
  * ELECTRICITY
  * my bespoke laptop
  * my two cats (which I’m counting as one and whoever criticises me for this is heartless)
  * my family (because I’m not heartless either)



**Three of my best life skills are:**

  * fixing gadgets, even those running on Windows
  * finding the best restaurants that deliver in my vicinity
  * taking down governments while in my pyjamas 



**The last book I read and enjoyed:** “The Circle” by Dave Eggers (since my sister refuses to give me ebooks for Christmas)

 **What would you do with an unexpected bonus?** Buy a vintage car and restore it myself (with upgrades, obviously).

 **Where would you go if you had two weeks off?** Spend three days with my family, then stock up on cat food, tea, and Red Bull, and finally [redacted due to possible legal repercussions].

 **Other than my parents, the most influential person in my life has been…** Alan Turing, for teaching me about sacrifice; Scotty for proving that you can get everything done faster if you put your mind to it; and Wade Wilson.

**Three things I am most thankful for:**

  * that I can count the number of times I actually had to say, “Have you tried turning it on and off again?” on one hand
  * that I didn’t have to lie when my sister asked me if she was talented enough for drama school
  * Ryan Reynold’s dedication to Deadpool



 

* * *

 

**ShakenNotStirred**

39 | male | London, England, UK | Seeking: men and women, 25-45

Former Royal Navy officer, current man of mystery

** Short description: **

I live for my job, which entails travelling and unpredictable hours. Earning my trust is difficult, yet once you have it you'll never find anyone more loyal.

 

** Basic Information **

Age:            39

Height:        5' 10" (1,78 m)

Hair:            blond

Eyes:           blue

Body type:   athletic

Ethnicity:     White / Caucasian

Occupation: arctic baby seal hunter

Education:   university degree

Languages:  English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, rudimentary German, Korean, and others

Faith:           Culturally Atheist

Has Kids:     no

Wants Kids:  not necessarily

Drinks:         yes

Smokes:       the occasional cigar

 

 **In my own words**  

 **What I am looking for in a partner:** Acceptance of my work hours, strength of character, wit, and independence.

 **The one thing I’m most passionate about is…** my country.

 **Other than appearance, the first thing that people notice about me is…** my charm.

**Four things my friends say about me:**

  * “Sometimes I think he’s actually a five-year-old in a grown-up’s body.”
  * “He’s such a handsome devil.”
  * “What a cocky bastard.”
  * Alternatively, “No, James” and “You’re the reason I’m prematurely grey” is also quite frequent.



**My idea of an ideal date:** involves anything where we can talk; preferable within a comfortable setting that has good food and/or drink. 

**Deal breakers:**

  * Clingy partners
  * Elitism, though a healthy dose of arrogance if earned is appreciated
  * Laziness 



**The one thing that people don’t notice about me right away that I wish they would:** I have feelings, too.

 **I hate it when people…** when doctors make me stay in their facilities even though I’m obviously fine.

 **I usually spend my leisure time…** exercising my mind and body.

**Five things I can’t live without:**

  * a weapon nearby
  * comfortable clothes
  * scotch, or other alcohol
  * mirrors
  * a good book



**Three of my best life skills:**

  1. knowing how to wear a suit
  2. hand-to-hand combat
  3. cooking (yes, this is a hierarchy)



**The last book I read and enjoyed:** … changes quite frequently; better ask me on our first date. 

 **What I would do with an unexpected bonus:** upgrade my Aston Martin.

 **Where I would go if I had two weeks off:** Since I travel a lot for my job, I’d prefer to stay in London.

 **Other than my parents, the most influential person in my life has been…** my former boss, who took a chance on me.

**Three things I am most thankful for:**

  * the distractive power of explosions
  * my ability to ignore rules



 


End file.
